


Running All This Time

by Rizandace



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: And I do mean everyone, I know everyone's done mosaic timeline fics, M/M, Mosaic Timeline, Multi, Original Plot, This is aggressively happy for the most part, and happy endings, and some adventuring, but I actually do think I have a different take that might be interesting, but there are some angst bits as well, for everyone, longfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:43:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 179,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizandace/pseuds/Rizandace
Summary: The story of the mosaic timeline, built on the foundation of love and communication.Now Complete!





	1. Chapter One - In Which a Relationship Deepens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's the exact inverse of a slow-burn? Well, whatever it is, I think that's what I'm writing. This fic asks the question: what if the very first thing that happens in a novel-length story is that the two main characters fall in love and get together? What comes next?
> 
> A quick programming note: I will not be updating this story with the same frequency as the other multi-chapters that I've written, because it is a BEAST, and I can't possibly finish the whole thing before starting to post. So, I am aiming to update on a once weekly schedule, Monday evenings PST. If I find myself needing to deviate from that posting schedule, I will try to let you know in an author's note. You can come bug me about it on Tumblr @Nellie-Elizabeth, too, if you feel so inclined.
> 
> Okay, let's dive in... our story opens on a very familiar night in the Fillorian past, as Quentin and Eliot celebrate their one-year anniversary at the mosaic....

**ELIOT**

Quentin was sweet. There were a lot of words that Eliot could think of to describe him, several of them a lot more besotted than he was comfortable with, but _sweet_ was an apt descriptor, generally speaking.

He had the softest little smile, and wide brown eyes that crinkled up in the corners when he was happy. He had strong yet gentle hands, hands that were somehow mesmerizing as he flapped them around wildly during conversation, trying to paint pictures in the air to accompany his latest rant about whatever-the-fuck. His voice was calming, his circular logic compelling, enough so that Eliot found himself listening _\- really_ listening - whenever Quentin was talking to him, even if it was about the Plover books and what they suggested about this time period in Fillorian history, or the politics of trade when it came to buying labor from talking animals, or how he may have come up with a better tracking system to mark down the mosaic patterns they'd already tried. Dry, uninteresting stuff, really. Which is what Eliot told Quentin, with an eye-roll, to stop him from getting a big head.

The point was, Quentin was _sweet_. And he understood Eliot in some profound way that should have made him uncomfortable, but really, really didn't. Maybe it was the opium in the air. Or, you know, the fact that Eliot was in love with him. Impossible to tell, really. 

Being _known_ by Quentin Coldwater didn't feel frightening. Or rather, it _did_, but in the kind of exhilarating way that Eliot Waugh, thrill-seeker, was all too willing to indulge. When you lived with someone non-stop for months on end, you had two options: drive each other up the wall, or get with the program and learn how to be in a relationship. And so they'd done the latter.

Quentin knew when to help Eliot with difficult tasks, and when Eliot needed to take his aggression out on their stupid little cottage by himself in their unending project to make it actually livable. When Eliot had tried to repair the roof and had ended up hammering his own thumb, Quentin had known exactly how much of a fuss to make to get Eliot to take care of his hand, while not pushing over into smothering. And when Eliot, about three months in, had conceded with reluctance that getting drunk first thing in the morning was probably bad for his long-term questing capabilities, and had decided to cut back, Quentin had known not to say a fucking word about it. And while he'd detoxed, with the reluctant (internal) acknowledgment that he might just have the slightest bit of a dependency issue, Quentin had known when to indulge Eliot's bratty attitude and pick a cathartic fight, and when to ignore his nasty mood and let Eliot stew in silence. And he knew things that Eliot had never told anyone before, things about his childhood that he usually glossed over, things about his queerness and the way he identified himself, his aspirations when he'd been younger, before Brakebills, the way he'd felt after everything that happened with Mike, the way Fillory had saved his life, his relationship with Fen.

And the best part of all, was that Eliot was starting to know Quentin _back_. After nearly a year of non-stop companionship, he'd come to know when and how to joke Quentin out of a foul mood, and when Quentin needed to be handled with care. He'd known when to crowd him and force him to talk, despite his protests, and when it was really okay to leave him alone for a while to ruminate in his own internal darkness. He knew all of the mundane habits of his day-to-day existence, knew what foods he liked best, how he liked to sort his tiles, what he thought about country music, the works of Tolkien, queer and feminist theory as it applied to the works of _Fillory_, frozen yogurt, his favorite season (Autumn), his favorite Avenger (Steve Rogers), a detailed description of every crush and relationship he'd ever been in. He knew the stories of Quentin's parents' divorce, the time he'd sprained his ankle when he was fifteen, his messy feelings for Julia, his hospitalizations, the darkest and brightest corners of his mind.

Knowing Quentin in that way was just as good as being known by him. There was something so satisfying about this hard-earned trust, the fact that Quentin relied on him and he _wanted_ that, wanted to care for Quentin and wanted Quentin to care for him right back.

And if sometimes he'd stare a bit too long at Quentin in profile, admiring the way he bit his lip in concentration while sketching out mosaic designs, longing to feel the strands of Quentin's pretty hair between his fingers, aching to curl a hand around his neck and pull him in, smell his scent and press that perfect little compact body against every line of his own... well, there were worse things in the world than a bit of indulgent pining.

It was just when Eliot was congratulating himself on _knowing Quentin_ better than anyone probably ever had, that he was thrown the most delightful, heart-pounding, life-altering curve-ball.

"Happy anniversary, Q. To our first and last year at this thing," he had said, tapping his cup against Quentin's.

And then Quentin had stuttered adorably at him, and - and _kissed_ him. It happened so quickly that Eliot's stomach had barely had time to swoop, and then Quentin was just sitting there looking at him, a little sheepish, maybe slightly defiant, and Eliot had thought to himself - _wait, not yet. I need more of that. Now_. 

And so, feeling remarkably calm and sure about the whole thing, he'd leaned forward, put his hand around Quentin's neck exactly where he'd been dreaming about, and pressed their lips together again.

Quentin was the best thing he'd ever tasted. His lips were so soft, and they parted so naturally under his that for a moment it felt like this was something they'd done a thousand times. And then, after an endless moment of gentle, nearly chaste pressure between the two of them, Quentin turned his head slightly, widened his mouth, and _oh_.

Quentin was - he was _good_ at this; he increased the pressure, curling his tongue forward to touch lightly at the edge of Eliot's mouth until Eliot opened to him, and then brought his hand up to trace along Eliot's jaw, cupping around the side of his face so he could turn his head for him, adjusting so they could deepen the kiss, sink in to the slick, hot, toe-curling wonder of it. A voice in the back of Eliot's head was practically giddy with delight - _we're kissing Quentin, he's kissing us, this is the best fucking day_ \- but he tried to ignore the overwhelmed, nearly disbelieving feeling, keep his breath even and his hands steady as he reached hesitantly for Quentin's waist. He had the strange idea that he was going to spook Quentin if he moved too quickly, despite the fact that Q had somehow managed to take the lead, here.

Quentin was decidedly not spooked. Instead, when Eliot, still keeping their lips sealed together, curled a hand around his ribs, Quentin moved like he'd been waiting to be asked. And he - oh fuck, Eliot might just be in over his head here - _crawled in to Eliot's lap_.

He was the perfect fucking size for it, too, so compact and small and _hot_ \- he fit in Eliot's arms like that was where he was supposed to be, like they were two interlocking figures that had just been given permission to snap together the way they belonged. The gentle slowness of their kiss shifted into something smoldering and _aching_ with promise and lust, and Eliot felt his stomach coil tight at the feel of it, just as Quentin separated their lips by a millimeter, and spoke, his breath fanning out over Eliot's face in a way that made his skin tingle. "Is this okay?" 

There was just the tiniest tremor of uncertainty in Quentin's voice, and hearing it somehow put Eliot back on firmer footing. He'd felt unmoored by Quentin's delightful confidence, but now, knowing that he wasn't quite as self-assured as he'd seemed, Eliot found himself falling all too naturally into a more suave part of himself. "More than okay," he said, reconnecting their lips, his arms tightening around Quentin's back. _I'm going to take care of you_, he thought to himself. _Oh, just you fucking wait, Q, I'm going to take such good care of you_.

Quentin made a little hum of pleasure against his lips, running his arms up Eliot's back until both of his hands could tangle in Eliot's hair. Eliot tugged slightly on Quentin's waist until they were lined up entirely, and he felt a thrill when he confirmed that Quentin was getting hard too. Quentin's hum turned to a little gasp at the feel, and he broke their lips apart, tilting their foreheads so they were touching. Their noses brushed together. "Is _this_ okay?" Eliot asked him back, canting his hips up just slightly so there would be no room for misinterpretation.

"Um. Fuck yes," Quentin said, a little breathless, and Eliot laughed, delighted.

For a while neither of them seemed willing to separate long enough for anything more than this. Quentin was the perfect amount of warm weight on top of him, and Eliot could have happily stayed there for the rest of his life. They kissed until they were both breathing hard, sliding their lips together and then pausing to explore the remainder of easily available skin. Eliot spent careful minutes cataloging every spot on Quentin's face and neck, memorizing the places on him that were sensitive, relishing in the moan he got when he grazed his teeth lightly over his jaw, shivering when Quentin held Eliot's head to his neck and threw his own head back to give him better access to the warmth of his pulse.

But eventually Eliot was having to fight not to grind up into him, and the fleeting thought of what this would feel like without clothes on was enough to shock him in to further action. He shifted his legs, keeping his arms tight around Quentin, and, in a maneuver that was not-too-shabby, if he said so himself, lowered Quentin back onto the mosaic, keeping his own body on top of him.

"Eliot," Quentin said, his eyes going wide, as Eliot nudged and arranged Quentin until he was lying flat on his back, with Eliot cradled between his legs.

Eliot smiled at him, already trembling with the need to kiss him again - "Now, is _this_ okay - "

Quentin laughed at him and rolled his hips up, and Eliot's teasing grin collapsed into a completely involuntary groan. "I think," Quentin said, rolling up again and making Eliot's elbows buckle slightly, "it's safe to say that I'm going to be fucking _okay_ with anything you want to do to me."

"You have to tell me," Eliot said, his eyelids shuttering as Quentin kept moving his hips. The world was growing blurry around the edges. Quentin was suddenly the only thing in the universe that made any sense to him. "You - God, Q, have to tell me if you're not, because I want - "

"Yes," Quentin said at once. "I'll tell you, but believe me, El, I want it too. Whatever you want, I want it."

Eliot had to kiss him for that. It was a new kind of thrill, to cover Quentin's smaller body with his own, to crowd him into the blanket and nuzzle his way down his throat, nipping at the hollow just above the line of his shirt, all while Quentin kept up the slow, sensuous roll of his hips, bringing them both to full hardness.

They had to disentangle slightly in order for Eliot to pull Quentin's shirt off of him, and then his own, but it was well worth it for the expanse of freshly exposed skin that was suddenly his to explore.

He kept things slow and methodical, delighting in every new sensation - the gasp and moan when Eliot licked at Quentin's nipples, the way his stomach muscles contracted when Eliot ran his hands firmly up and down his sides. It was easy to ignore his own erection trapped inside of his worn pants, in favor of wringing every possible reaction he could out of this beautiful squirming man before him.

He kissed his way down Quentin's stomach, Quentin's hands both tangled in Eliot's hair, and then he ducked lower, mouthing against Quentin's still clothed crotch. "_Fuck_," Quentin said, and his hips stuttered up. "Oh my God."

"Yeah?" Eliot asked, lifting his head enough to look up at Quentin. Q was resting on his elbows and looking down at Eliot in astonishment, his face flushed and his pupils noticeably dilated, even in the dim light. He gave Eliot a shaky nod, seemingly unable to find words.

Feeling smug, Eliot reached for the fastenings of Quentin's pants and pulled them, along with his underwear, down so they bunched up near Quentin's ankles. Quentin was fully hard; his cock actually sprung free of his clothing to slap against his stomach in a way that made Eliot's whole body feel feverish. He'd had ideas about continuing to take his time, but they flew out of his head - he wanted Quentin in his mouth _now_. He wanted to make Q fall the fuck apart. He looked up to meet Quentin's eyes once more, attempted a confident, cheeky grin, and then lowered his head and got to work.

Quentin shouted out the second Eliot got his mouth around him, his body curling up for a moment before flopping back down. "Oh, _Christ_, Eliot."

Eliot moaned around him. He knew how that felt, knew that the vibrations of a warm, wet mouth only enhanced the experience, but he actually hadn't done it for show. He'd perfected the art of giving head long ago, as a matter of course, and he liked it well enough. But there was something so desperately _hot_ about knowing this was Quentin, knowing that his best friend in the world, the man he loved more than anything, was the one whimpering and stuttering his way through curses above him, as Eliot bobbed his head and curled his tongue, pulling out every trick he'd ever learned to make Quentin lose his mind.

He decided to take it as a compliment when, only a few minutes in, the pitch of Quentin's moans started to change. His hands, which had been curled gently around Eliot's head, spasmed suddenly, his fingers clutching and grabbing and Eliot's hair. The slightly rough treatment was seriously fucking doing it for Eliot, who moaned again around Quentin, taking him to the root and swallowing around the head.

"_Oh, fuck, fuck, El - stop, I'm gonna - _"

Eliot popped off of Quentin's cock which was literally throbbing now, so close to release, and placed a hand around it, jerking roughly a few times. "If you do, can you go again?" he asked, his voice coming out low and greedy, even to his own ears.

"_I - what? _El - _El_, fuck_ \- _" Quentin gasped a few times, his eyes wide with panic, and Eliot took pity on him, stilling the motion of his hand but still keeping it wrapped around him.

"I said," he repeated, "if you come now, can you go again tonight?" 

Quentin looked at him for a long moment like the words still weren't making sense, and Eliot fucking loved him so much it was a literal, physical sensation inside of him, nearly painful. Finally, Quentin nodded, dazed. "Uh - yeah, I don't think that will be a problem."

"Mmm. Good," Eliot said, and without further ado, he popped his lips back around Quentin.

Quentin came about thirty seconds later, keening and crying out and tugging on Eliot's hair, and Eliot swallowed every drop, feeling greedy for every goddamn thing Quentin was willing to give him.

When Quentin's moans turned overwhelmed from over-stimulation, Eliot reluctantly let him drop from his mouth, resting his head against Quentin's thigh for a moment.

Eliot felt dizzy, like he was the one who'd just come, even though he knew, in a hazy, unconcerned sort of way, that he was still hard. Somehow, that had been the best blowjob of Eliot's life, and he hadn't even been on the receiving end. Was this what love did to everyone? Or was it unique to Quentin Coldwater? Jesus.

"El," Quentin said, when he'd managed to catch his breath. "El, oh my God, please, you have to let me touch you."

Eliot wanted to laugh at the note of urgency in his voice, but he didn't - because he _understood_. If Quentin was even half as out-of-his-mind for Eliot as Eliot was for _him_, then -

Well, then, what?

Eliot opened his mouth to tell Quentin that he didn't have to reciprocate unless he wanted to, but the words got lost somewhere as Quentin pulled hard at his shoulders, kissing him the second their lips were in reach of one another. Quentin shoved him until Eliot was on his back, resting his weight back on his arms as Quentin kissed and kissed him until Eliot's hazy satisfaction receded and he felt the sharp desperation of his own need come in to clear focus again. He was so fucking hard. How the hell had he managed to forget that?

Quentin was sliding down his body, reaching for his pants, and Eliot felt like he should probably be a gentleman and articulate that there really was no _quid pro quo_ requirement, but he was having trouble remembering how to talk, and then Quentin was kicking his own pants and underwear off and away from his legs to give himself greater freedom of movement, pulling Eliot out from the confines of his pants without bothering to slide them down his legs, and bending over to lick at the head of his already leaking cock.

A sound punched out of Eliot's stomach, something between a moan and a laugh, and then Quentin wrapped his lips around him, and Eliot lost his mind.

It felt - so fucking good. He had several very specific memories of their night with Margo, and he'd remembered that Quentin had been a fucking natural at giving head. But a big part of him had thought he must have exaggerated it in his own mind, some sort of nostalgic longing for a repeat performance making his recall somehow heightened beyond reality.

But no. Apparently not.

"_Holymotherfuckinggoddamn_, Quentin," Eliot said. Breathed. Moaned. His ears were ringing; he had no idea how loud he was being, but he couldn't help it.

Quentin looked up at him and made eye-contact, somehow managing to look sincere and cocky all at once, and Eliot threw his head back, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment against the stimulation of just - _looking_ at him like that, never mind the expertise of that perfect little mouth. Quentin clearly knew what the fuck he was doing, and Eliot was starting to think his dear friend had been full of shit when he'd told Eliot of his awkward undergrad fumblings, boys and girls alike offering him underwhelmed smiles and chaste kisses in form of performance review. As far as Eliot was concerned, any guy who'd had Quentin's mouth on his dick would be hard pressed to forget it.

"You - " he started to say, accusatory, and then groaned when Quentin did something with his tongue that erased all higher brain function for a moment. "Oh my God, Q, what the _fuck_, you're so good at this." Quentin somehow gave the impression of smiling, all while keeping his mouth very busy. His hands were working the length of Eliot that he couldn't reach with his mouth, his spit serving as lube. Quentin did the brain-breaking thing with his tongue again, and Eliot's hips stuttered up without his permission. "Oh, _fuck_, sorry, sorry - "

But Quentin just redoubled his efforts, reaching out without looking for one of Eliot's hands, bringing it up to his head, molding Eliot's fingers around the back of the neck until Eliot got the idea and held him firm. Then he pulled nearly all the way off of Eliot's cock, widened his mouth a little, and looked up at Eliot, blinking slowly. Giving - permission - to -

Goddamn.

"You're not real," Eliot said, dazed. "I made you up somehow."

Quentin lifted up and off of him for a moment, keeping a hand around the base of Eliot's cock. "Are you saying I'm the man of your dreams?" he said, smirking. His mouth was so _red_. Eliot took the hand resting on the back of Quentin's neck and trailed it downward, pressing a thumb into Q's lower lip, before returning it to bunch his fingers in Quentin's hair again.

He wanted to say _yes_ to that, but if he did, he knew it would break something fragile that had grown between them, would turn this into a _thing_ that Eliot wasn't sure he was ready to contemplate. Not yet. Not in this moment, just in case everything went bad.

So instead, he just smiled at Quentin, and flicked his eyes downward, raising an eyebrow as if to say - _get to it_. And Quentin did, allowing Eliot to fuck up into his mouth until his brain finally shut all the way up and ceased to think in anything approaching coherent sentences.

Quentin didn't even need to be told when he was close - one sharp warning tug to Quentin's hair and, instead of backing off the way Eliot had maybe expected him to, he closed his lips around him and slid down lower than he had yet. Eliot had a brief, fleeting moment of worry that Quentin was going to choke, but then Quentin swallowed around him and his orgasm hit him like a freight train, every muscle in his body locking down and then shaking apart as he came down Quentin's throat.

Even as the urgency of release left him, he floated on the feeling for a long time, lying back fully on the mosaic as his muscles turned to liquid, every inch of him tingling as Quentin crawled his way back up Eliot's body, resting against his side and connecting their lips in a slow, lazy sort of way. Eliot could taste himself on Quentin's mouth, and kept kissing him until he couldn't anymore, wholly unable to move anything beyond his lips.

"Quentin," Eliot said finally, as awareness of the rest of the world started to seep back in. His heart wasn't racing quite as much any more, and he could take a breath without gasping. "Quentin, holy fuck."

Quentin laughed, ducking his head and nuzzling his nose into Eliot's shoulder in a criminally adorable sort of way. "Yeah, you too," he said, muffled into Eliot's skin.

"You're such a liar," Eliot said.

"What?" Quentin said, laughing again and lifting his head slightly so he could see Eliot's face.

"You said you weren't good at sex."

"I don't think I said that exactly," Quentin said, squirming to get even closer to Eliot. "Anyway, I was trying to impress you."

Eliot bit back on a grin, worried that his expression was turning into something unambiguously dopey and lovesick. "Mission fucking accomplished, Coldwater."

They just lay there, out in the open, Quentin fully naked and Eliot with his pants still mostly on, the remains of their clothing bunched up and around them in a thoroughly disorganized way. Eliot felt safer and more relaxed there, in that moment, than he could ever remember being. His brain kept trying to panic and list all of the reasons why this had been a bad idea that would be sure to ruin their friendship forever, but Eliot was finding it easy somehow to push those anxieties aside. Quentin had wanted this. Eliot had wanted this. It had been goddamn fantastic. Even if this was the only time it ever happened -

"El?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you come to bed with me?"

And Eliot realized, in a way that felt momentous as well as simple, that he really wasn't afraid. Not even a little bit. He stood up and held out a hand for Quentin, and then pulled them both inside.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Eliot was vocal in bed. Quentin had never had that before with anyone - most of his past partners has been fairly taciturn, and Quentin had resigned himself to the label of "serviceable but not spectacular" when it came to sex. In the buildup to kissing Eliot, after a year of wanting him and imagining what it would be like, Quentin had never really contemplated that he could be anything more than average, even with Eliot. Maybe _especially_ with Eliot.

He'd thought that given the fact that they'd both been without sex for a year, Eliot would probably be game. And that even if it hurt to know that Quentin was a means to an end, Eliot would still, you know - _take care of him_ \- the way he could remember from their one and only night together back on Earth. And Q had been kind of desperate for it, desperate enough to ignore the fact that sex with your best friend who you were not-so-secretly in love with might not be the best idea in the world.

And then instead of that, instead of Quentin laying back and letting Eliot blow his mind, the sex had been a fuck of a lot better than _serviceable_ for _both_ of them. And Eliot, delightfully, had let him know. Loudly and often. After they'd exchanged blowjobs out on the mosaic, they'd come inside and Eliot had worked him quite thoroughly back to the brink using just his tongue and fingers, and then he'd slid inside of Quentin and utterly and completely ruined him for _anyone else ever again oh holy God_.

Eliot had groaned his appreciation and desire into the sweaty skin on the back of Quentin's neck, whispered it against his stomach as he moved his lips over every inch of Quentin's trembling body, shouted it out while he was inside of Quentin for the _second_ time, face-to-face and pressed every inch together as tight as they could get... and Quentin had felt - he'd felt _wanted_ and _good_ and like he was giving Eliot something just as much as he was receiving it.

It had been the best sex of Quentin's life, bar none, and he hadn't even felt that embarrassed about confessing as much to Eliot as they lay entwined together in the early hours of the morning, shortly after their - second? no, _third_ \- round.

"Fuck, Quentin, me too," Eliot had said, easy as anything.

And Quentin hadn't been able to stop himself from letting out an incredulous snort. Eliot sat up, glaring down at him. "What? I mean it."

"You're Eliot Waugh," Quentin reminded him. "Don't worry, you're not going to hurt my feelings if you admit - "

Eliot lowered himself back down, twisting so he was resting nearly on top of Quentin again. Such was the nature of prolonged abstinence that his thoroughly exhausted dick actually gave a little twitch of interest against Eliot's hip, even though he knew he was far too weary to go again right now. Eliot clearly noticed, and he smirked. Kind of evilly.

"Quentin Coldwater," Eliot said, grave but still smiling. "I'm going to tell you something that might potentially be very humiliating for me."

Quentin scrunched his eyebrows together and said nothing, just waiting. Eliot didn't _confess_ things very often. It was best not to interrupt him when he was in a sharing mood.

Eliot sighed, looking down at him with enough affection and residual lust that Quentin felt his face grow warm. And then Eliot spoke:

"I'm more than a little in love with you."

Quentin's breath left him like he'd been punched in the stomach. "You - what?"

"I _said_, I'm in - "

"Are you fucking with me right now?" Quentin said. He was shaking suddenly, and for the first time that evening, maybe for the first time in his life, he wanted Eliot to stop touching him. Because - this was just - _uncalled for_ levels of cruelty, if Eliot didn't mean it.

"No," Eliot said, and he sounded like he was close to laughing. "No, I'm not fucking with you. Look, I don't mean to drop a bombshell on you like that, but it's the truth. Before tonight I sort of thought that - you know, that one time with me and Margo was - because I know you regretted it, and - " he sighed, waving a hand in dismissal of his point. "But whatever. I was going to keep it to myself. But now..."

"Wait," Quentin said, and he shoved a bit at Eliot's arm until Eliot got the idea and rolled off of him. Quentin sat up, straight and still. "You're serious."

"Yep," Eliot said cheerfully. "Look, I want to assure you that I'm not expecting anything. I just - I wanted you to know. It's the kind of thing I'd want to hear, if it were me."

Quentin's mouth wasn't working. His skin was on fire. Eliot was - he was saying all of this like it was no big _deal_, like it meant _nothing_, and - well... no. That wasn't quite right.

Eliot's eyes, when Quentin dared to meet them, were as open and frank and honest and Quentin had ever seen them. He wasn't being frivolous, here. The laughter in his voice wasn't dismissive or mocking. He was just - happy? Maybe? It was sort of a weird look on him, certainly unfamiliar, and just that thought alone made Quentin's chest ache. He wanted to open his mouth and reciprocate, because - holy shit, this was happening, he was in love with Eliot and Eliot was _in love with him back_ and even if they were stuck here together for the rest of forever, they were - _in love_ apparently, and - 

"So when I say this was the best sex of my life," Eliot said, still aggravatingly composed about the whole thing, "I meant it. Sure, I've had, you know, _kinkier_ sex in my day. And orgies and whatnot." Eliot waved a hand again, dismissing the existence of these salacious details like they truly didn't bear mentioning. "But _you_, Quentin. You are like - the best person I've ever met, and you're unbelievably attractive, and smart, and funny, and kind. And as an added bonus to all of that, you suck cock like you've been training for it your whole life. I mean it, I think I forgot my own name there for a second. You're going to have to show me that thing with your tongue again, because - "

Quentin slapped a hand over Eliot's mouth. Eliot's eyes sparkled with amusement, and he opened his mouth against Quentin's palm, clearly intending to try and keep talking anyway. "Shush," Quentin said, glaring. "Shut up for a second, I need to say something."

Eliot nodded.

"Me too," Quentin said, and Eliot's eyebrows came together. Quentin took a deep breath, because he had to do better than that. It was just hard to think straight long enough to form sentences, when all he wanted right now was to launch himself into Eliot's arms and kiss him for the rest of forever _holy shit_. "Eliot, I'm in love with you, too."

And Eliot, who had looked surprised but pleased at Quentin's first awkward kiss, but then had confidently pushed Quentin onto his back right under the Fillorian stars and done things to him that Quentin was going to be thinking about for the rest of his _life_, Eliot, who had just calmly stated his love for Quentin like such declarations weren't wildly out of character - froze. He froze, his eyes widening into large circles, his lips opening warm and soft against Quentin's palm.

Oh, right.

Quentin lifted his hand away from Eliot's mouth to let him respond, and then felt a fissure of uncertainty when he took in the whole of Eliot's expression.

"You - um. You - are?" Eliot said. He looked skeptical, like he was waiting for Quentin to say _just kidding_.

Quentin nodded, his throat tight. "Yes. Definitely."

The hesitant look on Eliot's face cracked slightly, something shifting in his eyes. "Quentin," he said, his voice low. His hand came up and he traced a finger down Quentin's cheek. "Quentin, are you - I mean, I'm not - "

"Not what?" Quentin said, aching. He shifted closer so he could press his forehead into Eliot's, and he watched as Eliot's eyes fluttered closed, his jaw bunching slightly. Quentin cupped the side of Eliot's face, felt the catch of stubble on his fingers and shivered.

"I'm not really sure what I'm doing," Eliot said finally, shaking his head and sitting up straighter, like he was coming out of a stupor. Like he was deciding something. "I'm bound to fuck it up, just so you know."

Quentin wanted to deny this, roll his eyes and tell Eliot he was crazy if he thought _he_ was the fuck-up between the two of them. But there was something in Eliot's expression, an open vulnerability that Quentin rarely saw, and treasured every time it appeared, and he knew he needed to take his response seriously. "Okay, so then we'll both fuck it up sometimes," he whispered. "And then we'll figure out how to fix it together." There was a long silence. Eliot seemed to be holding his breath. "If - " Quentin coughed. "If that's what you want."

Eliot went still against him for a moment, his muscles locking down, and then Quentin felt him shudder. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Q, oh my God." And then he tugged on him in what was already becoming a familiar move, and Quentin slid into his lap, wrapping his arms and legs around him and holding tight.

Quentin had to kiss him again. It wasn't a sexual thing - he was naked and on top of an equally naked Eliot but he'd had three orgasms tonight and he really didn't see anything more happening for at least a couple of hours and hopefully a wholesome meal, but that didn't matter. He had to be kissing him.

Eliot responded instantly, eagerly, their lips open and warm and moving perfectly together. It was a giddy kind of kiss, no longer tinged with that slight flavor of desperation that Quentin had been feeling all night. Because this wasn't a one night thing, this wasn't something that Quentin was supposed to be working out of his system, or that Eliot was indulging in because he was horny. This was - a beginning. The beginning of a type of happiness that Quentin had been searching for his entire life.

Eliot's lips were urgent against his, his breathing coming out thin and uneven in the space between their mouths, whenever they managed to separate long enough to take in air. "Quentin," he said, and then shook his head, brushing their noses together. "Quentin. I don't fucking know what to say."

Quentin smiled into the kiss, and then spoke, still right up against Eliot's lips. "Tell me again."

"I love you."

Quentin kissed him, effervescent and practically fizzing out of his skin. "Shit, that's like - crazy, El, I never thought you'd - "

"Well I do," Eliot said firmly. "And I'm only like 37 percent freaked out about it currently."

"Hmm." Quentin smiled. "That's something to be going on, I guess."

"That may be because I'm high on sex energy or something," Eliot warned. "Like I said, I have _no_ idea what I'm doing here, I cannot overemphasize the degree to which I am winging this - "

"Yeah, I got that," Quentin said, laughing. "But you mean it, yeah?"

Eliot blinked at him, and then kissed him again, this time sugar-sweet and sincere. "Yeah, I mean it." Then he huffed out a nervous puff of air against the side of Quentin's face. "Okay, your turn. Say it." Somehow, he made it sound simultaneously bossy and shy.

Quentin tapped an exaggerated finger against his chin, before shrugging and sliding their noses together. "I guess you're okay."

Eliot tipped them over so that he was on top of Quentin, and kissed him deep into the mattress, to the point where Quentin was seriously regretting the limits of mortal flesh. "Say it," Eliot said, breathless and full of wonder.

"I love you, Eliot. I love you so much."

"Wow, we're a couple of fucking _saps_," Eliot said happily, still kissing him. "Jesus, I could listen to you say that for the rest of my life."

And they stayed that way, kissing and talking and laughing and sighing and smiling until the sky started to get lighter outside, and exhaustion finally overtook them both.

* * *

Quentin was still happy later that morning when he and Eliot squirmed out of slumber and found themselves entwined, but his mind was racing in a way that it had been too tired to do before. He tried to keep his smile uncomplicated and happy, but Eliot, still blinking sleepily up at him, frowned in instant recognition. 

"Knock it off, Quentin," he said, affectionate but still stern. He tapped a finger against Quentin's forehead. "We're good. We're so fucking good."

"If I kiss you will you complain about morning breath?" Quentin asked, and Eliot grinned up at him and then tugged Quentin forward by the neck, holding them firmly together in the bed. After a moment, Eliot shifted his mouth away from Quentin's and kissed along his jawline.

"We both smell like sex," he said happily, and he slid a hand down Quentin's back to squeeze his ass, a casual familiarity that made Quentin smile.

"Okay, I'd like to think my stamina is nothing to sneeze at, but if you're trying to suggest - "

Eliot laughed, full throated and _happy_ in a way that made Quentin's own chest bloom with joy. "I think I'm literally dehydrated, Q. My arms are all weak and wobbly."

"Okay, so. Water. Food. Bathe. Mosaic. Um. Talk?" Quentin said. Making verbal lists was a thing he did sometimes, a way of ordering his brain, keeping the rest of the swirling, moody considerations away from the forefront of his mind. Eliot was used to it, and said he found it cute. Quentin was choosing to believe him.

"Water. Food. Bathe. Mosaic," Eliot agreed. "Mid-morning break for more sex. Talking's overrated."

Quentin snorted at him, kissed him hard, and then slid out of the bed.

The weird thing was, he didn't know exactly what was making him anxious. Or, well, that probably wasn't that weird. It happened often, just a general sense of unease, Quentin's brain chemistry setting off alarm signals even in the absence of any obvious threat. He was happy and sated in a way he certainly hadn't been expecting, even after all of his nervous planning about last night. He'd wanted sex with Eliot. He'd even dared to hope that it might happen more than once. But - this? Eliot giddy and loving and open about his feelings, declaring _love_? It was almost too much to process. It almost felt like something out of someone else's story, something he couldn't quite believe belonged to him.

After breakfast and other basic morning necessities, which took forever because they kept interrupting themselves to make out against the table, or the wall, or the beam in the center of the cottage, they made their way out to the mosaic, Eliot giggle-snorting at the sight of their discarded clothing still strewn about from the night before.

Quentin had tried to articulate this sense of anxiety to Eliot, without worrying him too much - "It's just, I'm really happy," he started, and was rewarded by a soft and encouraging smile. "I'm _so_ happy, but you know how my brain is like - a fucking mess all of the time, right?"

"I'm vaguely familiar," Eliot said, reaching a hand up and tucking a strand of hair that hadn't made it into Quentin's bun away from his face. "God, do you know how often I've stopped myself from doing that?"

Quentin's cheeks burned, and he looked away, coughing. "The - the point is, I just want to make sure that we're like - good, you know, because I'd hate it if anything that happened last night got in the way of us - you know - because you're my best friend in the whole world, Eliot. And that's - so important to me."

Eliot squinted at him for a moment, then bit his lip, fighting a smile. "I think we're on the same page, here, Q. I meant everything I said last night. Did you?"

"Yes. Yeah, obviously," Quentin said, rushing to confirm. He didn't want his neurotic ramblings to cast doubt on that. Not ever.

"So in that case..." Eliot said, turning to look at him and then away, a soft grin overtaking his face. He coughed, his face going blank again.

"In that case?"

Eliot huffed out a breath, rubbing a hand over the back of his own neck. Quentin tried to stop his anxiety from spiking up again when there was no immediate answer.

"Um," he started, wanting to fill the silence, to get back that sense of ease that had been enveloping them both. "Uh - um - "

"Yeah, um. Let's just save our overthinking for the puzzle, yeah?" Eliot sounded almost _shy_. It was incredibly endearing.

"Yeah," Quentin agreed, his heart turning over in his chest. God, he was such a goner.

And for a while, they _did_ save their overthinking. They had some designs mapped out to try for the day, and Quentin began the work of undoing yesterday's design, thinking as he did so that he should save their planning sketch of it. After all, this particular mosaic design was the sight of the beginning, for them. Would it be incredibly fucking cheesy to save it, and get it framed? When they got back to Earth, assuming they ever did, they could put it on a bedside table or something, a private love token between the two of them.

In a flash of insight, Quentin realized the source of his own stupid anxiety, and he paused, a handful of tiles gripped in his hands.

"Okay, yes," Quentin said, and Eliot turned his head to look at him, eyebrows raised. "I hear you, Eliot, about the overthinking, but I am going to say just one thing, okay?"

Eliot laughed at him, but it was a kind, indulgent sort of sound, so Quentin felt encouraged enough to go on. "This past year has sort of felt like this weird - _break_ from reality, you know? Some days I feel like I've been here my whole life, but other days it's like it's all a dream, and my actual life is on _pause_ somehow, and I'm going to blink and be back on Earth. You know?"

Eliot nodded at him, his eyes narrowed slightly. He didn't say anything, and Quentin loved him for letting him think out loud, the way he often needed to in order to get to the core of what he meant.

"I want you to know, Eliot, that I don't consider _this_," he waved a hand between the two of them. "As part of a... a _pause_. It's not an anomaly because of our situation. If we solve the mosaic today and go home, I'd still want us to be - "

Eliot's eyes went bright in understanding and affection. "Me too," he said immediately. He scooted over so they were sitting close, and pressed a single finger under Quentin's chin to tilt his face up. They kissed, soft and slow for a long moment, and Quentin was just starting to wonder if it would be truly negligent of him to suggest that they go back inside and spend the rest of the day in bed, when Eliot pulled back, keeping a hand gentle against the side of Quentin's face. His eyes darted over him, like he was seeking to memorize every inch. "Thank you, Quentin. For saying that."

"I mean it," Quentin said. Eliot smiled and ducked to kiss him again.

They didn't get much work done on the mosaic for the rest of the day. Or really, the rest of the week. Quentin couldn't bring himself to care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to take a moment here at the beginning of this project, the most ambitious thing I've ever written, to say thank you to this fandom, specifically the other fic writers. This might seem obvious to say, but I learned how to write fic by reading fic. As I was working on this piece, retreading over ground that so many others have already covered (especially in the first chapter), I was hit with a brief moment of paranoia that what I was writing would be "too derivative." But instead of looking at it like that, I want to look at it like a community of people who are all excited and passionate about a love story, all of us wanting to share that excitement with one another. I pulled so much inspiration from other authors who have written about the mosaic timeline, and I hope that if they find themselves reading this story, they take it as a tribute to their efforts that I wanted to join them.


	2. Chapter Two - In Which a Life is Built

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter! I hope that people enjoy where I'm going with this, as we see how my version of the mosaic timeline is hopefully different from most of what's out there in the fandom currently.
> 
> This is completely random, but maybe my favorite line that I've ever written in any story is in this chapter. If you can guess what it is I'll give you a virtual high-five.

**ELIOT**

Eliot was so seriously fucked. Like, honestly, how was it fair that any one human being could contain so many different way to drive him wild? He'd thought after a couple weeks of fucking each other practically nonstop, his yearning for Q would tamp down into something _reasonable_, but instead it seemed to be getting worse. He'd cheerfully spent several months pretending to ignore Quentin's ass as he crawled around the mosaic day after day, his Earth pants wearing thinner and thinner, but now that he knew that ass, hew _intimately_ what it felt like to be inside of it, just a side-long glance got him all hot and bothered. It was actually starting to become a bit of a problem.

He was convinced Quentin knew it, too, the cheeky bastard. (Pun intended). Did he really have to be on his knees like that, perky little backside up in the air like he _wanted_ Eliot to notice? And -

"Uh, El?" Quentin said, sitting down on his own feet, and turning his head to look over his shoulder. "Are you listening to a word I'm saying?"

Eliot swallowed, his mouth dry. "Not even a little bit," he admitted, shameless. "Come inside with me."

Quentin smiled at him, the tips of his cheekbones turning a beautiful shade of pink, but he shook his head. "You're insatiable. We've got _work_ to do."

"I can't concentrate when you look like that," Eliot said, standing up from his own spot on the other side of the unfinished pattern, and walking over to where Quentin was sitting.

"Like what?"

"Like _you_," Eliot said, holding out a hand to him. "C'mon, Q, it won't even take long - "

"And to think I was worried the romance wouldn't last," Quentin said, rolling his eyes. But he did take Eliot's hand, and he did follow him inside. And he did lock his legs tight around Eliot's waist and moan directly into Eliot's mouth while Eliot fucked him hard enough that neither of them could move for a solid half hour afterwards, so. Eliot felt like he'd won that round.

"You're the fucking worst," Quentin said, kissing Eliot's shoulder, the only bit he could reach since Eliot was still pinning him to the bed. "The goddamn worst. We're supposed to be on a quest, you know."

"Mmm," Eliot sighed. "But you're so pretty."

"You're full of it."

"Actually, if I recall correctly, it was the other way - "

Quentin smacked him on the back of the head, and then kept kissing his shoulder, mouthing at his skin in what Eliot was pretty sure was an unconscious gesture for Quentin 'Oral-Fixation' Coldwater.

"Hey, El?" He said after a moment. He sounded thoughtful now, and Eliot shifted slightly so he wasn't resting his full weight against Quentin anymore.

"Yeah?"

"Do you ever worry that we're like - being turtles?"

Eliot laughed, startled at this apparent non-sequitur. He ran his fingers through Quentin's soft hair, not bothering to answer. Quentin would explain himself in his own time.

"Because like - we're in this bubble. We've got the mosaic, and that's our focus, obviously, but now we're - like - um."

"A couple," Eliot suggested, and he felt Quentin grin into his shoulder.

"Yeah," he said, a little dreamy. "But it's just you and me, and the quest, and sometimes it feels like the rest of the world is very far away."

This was undoubtedly true. He thought he could see where Quentin was going with this, and wasn't sure he liked it. Being in the bubble with Quentin was amazing. Everything else felt too complicated to worry about most of the time.

"Okay, so we're turtles?" Eliot prompted. Quentin dented his teeth in Eliot's shoulder, nibbling on his arm for a moment.

"I think we need to get out of our shells," Quentin said. "It freaks me out to think about this, but it might be for the best if we... if we start thinking about our life here, long-term."

Eliot was silent for a long moment. "I hear you," he said finally. He waited another moment, to be sure that the lump in his throat was really gone - "It's just that I feel like if we do that, we're giving up on going home."

Quentin's hands, which had been scratching softly up and down Eliot's back, froze. Then, he started moving them again, deliberately gentle. "I miss them," he confessed. "Every fucking day. I keep waiting for it to get easier..."

"Yeah," Eliot said. "Yeah, I... it sucks. I never could have survived this past year without you, Q."

"Me neither. And - as much as I miss Julia, and my dad, and Margo, and - Alice, every day... I'm still glad it's you, El."

"God, me too," Eliot said, ignoring the squirming of guilt in his stomach. If he and Margo had ended up here alone, they'd have killed each other by now. He and Quentin were the perfect compliment, each able to wind each other up and calm each other down as need dictated.

"I don't want to give up on going home," Quentin said quietly, still speaking directly into his skin. "But I don't want to wait around in stasis forever either."

Eliot thought for a long moment about what Quentin was saying to him. He thought back to the night Quentin had kissed him and crawled into his lap, the way Eliot had chosen, in that heady, delightful moment, _not_ to self-sabotage. He'd known this would be hard work. The quest, a relationship with Quentin, all of it. He wanted to make Quentin happy, and, in a significantly more surprising twist, he wanted to _be _happy. He wanted to let himself have this, with everything that implied. He sighed, nuzzling into the space behind Quentin's ear. "Okay," he said. "Okay, so we'll make an effort, then. Let's stop waiting and start living."

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Quentin had been slightly worried that Eliot might resist the idea of settling in more comfortably in Fillory, so he was pleasantly surprised to see him take to the idea with vigor. Over the next several months, as their second year in the past continued on, the two of them worked hard to improve every aspect of their lives.

Eliot ended up taking charge of supply acquisition, bartering successfully with people at the nearby town of Langdale, which was nestled into a picturesque valley about ten miles down the wooded path from the mosaic cottage. Eliot was much more charismatic than Quentin, and managed to set up standing arrangements for basic food stuffs to supplement their magically-created diet, cloth for additional clothes, linens, spices, basic household necessities, even some bigger items like a new bedstead and a rug inside the cottage. He'd come home from day trips and surprise Quentin with a new blanket to ward off the increasingly chilly nights, or a fresh slab of meat for a proper dinner, and Quentin would feel warm all the way through to his toes, with the knowledge that they were really out there living their life, making a future for themselves.

Quentin's main role was in household repairs and improvements. He found that his physical magic, which had always been more detail-oriented, worked very well at repairing things like uneven wood slats and cracked chimney lining. He fixed the things he could, and re-purposed the rest, splitting up the nearly rotted wood from the small cottage table to use for firewood, finding a carpenter in Langdale who helped them to construct a sturdier substitute.

They paid for their necessities in magic, doing favors for the townsfolk and the outlying farming communities, forging relationships through good deeds from cleaning up a contaminated well to tracking down a missing puppy to helping the wealthiest merchant in town with his landscaping projects.

But even as the cottage grew out of its humble beginnings and started to take the shape of real comfort, and as they started to improve their diet and overall health with freshly butchered meat from town, and vegetables straight from their own little garden, the biggest change in their lives was undoubtedly the additions to their social circle.

("If we're doing this whole life-improvement project," Eliot had insisted to Quentin, shortly after Q had first raised the idea with him, "we've got to get ourselves some real friends here, in Fillory. Real people to tie ourselves to, outside of just ourselves."

"You're the extrovert," Quentin had said, shrugging. "Drag me along and I'll smile and nod." Then, at Eliot's glare, "And I'll _try my best_. Promise.")

And so it fell naturally to Eliot to try and integrate them more fully into their strange little community. They had a lot working against them at first, being the mysterious outsiders who had taken over the impossible mosaic task and didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular. But the more they showed their faces around town, buying food and goods and assisting people however they could, the more their eccentricities were ignored in favor of simple familiarity and friendliness.

There was Doady, the delivery boy, a wiry twenty-year-old who made his rounds between Langdale and the outlying farms, delivering letters, verbal messages, and packages - he'd come by the Mosaic, and Eliot had offered him lunch. The three of them had chatted an afternoon away, sending Doady off with a freshly repaired cart wheel, courtesy of Quentin, who had noticed it wobbling on Doady's way in to the clearing.

There was Arielle Ashmore, the traveling fruit-seller, and her beefcake boyfriend Lunk, who worked as a blacksmith in Langdale. Arielle was really nice, and funny, and easy to talk to, and Lunk was - a lump, honestly, but whatever. Arielle introduced them to her parents and whole extended family, all of whom lived on a farm nearby.

There was Ostrich, the confusingly-named talking black bear bachelor who lived in the nearby woods and sometimes wandered out into the clearing to say a lethargic hello, and one of Arielle's aunts was friends with a family of giant eagles - Quentin had had the strange pleasure of meeting Arnold, the family's feathered patriarch, during a visit to the farm.

("Did he look like the ones from _The Lord of the Rings_?" Eliot had asked him, jealous at having missed the introduction.

"You're such a nerd," Quentin had said, full of terrific amounts of affection.)

In the blink of an eye, six months had passed, and Quentin and Eliot were well and truly a part of the landscape - a curiosity to passing travelers, a regular sight in the village and surrounding farmsteads, and a true friend to a few of their neighbors, Arielle especially.

And through all of it, Quentin had the singular joy of also building a partnership with Eliot. It felt cheesy to say, and maybe a little dismissive of all of his past relationships (few though there had been), but he honestly hadn't known that love could _be_ like this. It wasn't easy all of the time, of course, but even when they got into arguments or started to irritate one another, there was this core-deep trust and certainty between them, the ever-steady knowledge that no matter what, they'd be there for one another. Quentin could talk to Eliot about _anything_, and he wasn't afraid of the reaction. Because he knew, even if he said something to hurt Eliot or piss him off, Eliot wouldn't run away. He wouldn't dismiss how Quentin was feeling, even if he didn't agree with it. And Quentin took pride in being that pillar of support and love for Eliot in return.

That wasn't to say that the shine never came off the apple, though. Eliot, who had mostly stopped drinking, decided getting shit-faced on his birthday would be an excellent idea, and had griped and groaned at Quentin's worried glances all day, vicious in his determination to make the day as miserable as possible for both of them. He even rejected Quentin's timid suggestion that they go on a trip to the village and pick something out as a birthday present.

He'd been contrite the next morning, crawling across the space between them in bed, folding Quentin into his arms. ("I'm a dick. I'm awful, Q, I'm sorry I scared you. I just - I really miss Bambi. We always spent my birthday together.")

And Quentin still had bad brain days, where the entirety of his life and the quest all seemed pointless, where he wanted to go home and fetch somebody who wasn't so fucking useless and let _them_ try the mosaic, and no amount of cajoling from Eliot could get him to leave the cottage. He tried apologizing for those occasions once the fog lifted, but Eliot never let him, just shushing him and cradling him and kissing him with enough relief and love to melt all of the tension straight out of Quentin's body.

"Hey, I really love you," Quentin told him one morning, as they sat munching on fresh baked bread for their breakfast.

Eliot looked up at him, startled and pleased. "And I really love you." Then he squinted at him. "Are you trying to butter me up for something?"

Quentin laughed. "_No_. I just - " he sighed. "I was thinking about Ari and Lunk again."

Eliot sighed too, reaching a hand forward and brushing his knuckles against Quentin's cheek. "That guy's a fucking idiot. You were right, she's way too good for him."

Just a week earlier, Arielle had come by and told them that Lunk had cheated on her. She'd been a little frigid, clearly determined to make out like it was no big deal, that the single life was the one she preferred anyway, but it hadn't been a very convincing act. The three of them had ended up going on a long walk through the surrounding woods, letting Arielle rant and rave about every tiny little thing Lunk had ever done wrong in their entire time together, while Quentin and Eliot took turns wrapping arms around her shoulders, trying to boost her spirits.

"I hate seeing her in pain like that," Quentin said, frowning, "But it did make me feel even more grateful, you know, for - you. Us."

Eliot's grin grew wider. "We're kind of crushing it, aren't we?" he asked. "This whole relationship thing."

"Yeah," Quentin said. "Honestly, we _are_. Who the fuck would have predicted that?"

"Not me," Eliot said, munching contemplatively on his bread. "I used to be such a fucking _mess_, Q. And now? Sometimes when I'm buying fabric to build us an awning for our _house_ that we _live in together,_ or harvesting fresh carrots from our garden or making a cobbler so we have a desert to bring over to our friend's houses for a fucking _dinner party_, I get these weird flashes of like - how the fuck is this my life?"

"In a good way?"

"In a _great_ way," Eliot said. "It's all so goddamn normal, despite the magic and the talking animals and impossible stupid mosaic. We're - _adulting_. And we're doing it well."

"What do you think early-Brakebills Eliot would say if he knew what was coming?"

"He would have been performatively horrified that he'd become a happy little homemaker," Eliot said at once. "But even then I think I was pining for stability. I'd just never met anyone I could really have that with."

Quentin dropped the unfinished slice of bread on his plate and stood up, crossing to Eliot. "You say stuff like that and it makes me want to pounce on you."

"Pounce away," Eliot said, popping a final bit of bread into his mouth. Quentin leaned forward, determined to get that smug expression off of Eliot's face, and was rewarded with a moan when he palmed at Eliot's crotch, darting his tongue out to lick at his ear.

Quentin kept his hand steady and slow, smirking to himself against Eliot's neck as he felt him start to grow hard against his hand. "_Q_," he said, his head tilting back to give Quentin more room. "You feel so good."

Quentin scraped his teeth along the column of Eliot's neck, and then pulled back with a final squeeze, removing his hand. "We've got work to do, mister," he said, marching to the door.

"You're _evil_," Eliot hissed, not entirely kidding, and he nearly tripped getting out of his chair, grabbing at Quentin's shoulder before he could open the door. He spun Quentin around and pinned him against it instead, rolling his erection into Quentin's hip.

And it was nearly noon before they managed to make their way outside and get started on their first mosaic pattern for the day.

* * *

**ELIOT**

"Where's Quentin?" Arielle asked, strolling up to the mosaic and tossing a customary peach in Eliot's direction. Eliot caught it automatically, smiling at Arielle and nodding his head at the bench, offering her a seat.

"He's inside," Eliot said, trying to sound casual about it. "Not feeling well."

"Oh. Sick? Or... the other thing?"

Arielle knew about the bad brain days. She'd been their friend for almost a year now, and while they hadn't confided their true origins to her, she was starting to get to know them pretty well.

"The other thing," Eliot said, twisting his mouth into a grimace. "Third day in a row. I can barely get him to eat."

"I'm sorry," Arielle said. "That must be really scary for you."

Eliot shrugged, because what could he say? Of course it was scary. Whenever Quentin got like this it was _terrifying_. He couldn't go thirty seconds without remembering Quentin's low-voiced confidences, whispered into the night when they'd only been at the mosaic for a couple of months. The suicide attempts he'd barely survived, the notes he'd left for Julia and his dad to find, the long and painful struggle back to the light out of the darkness, and the way that darkness waited for him just around the corner, never fully releasing its hold. There were no goddamn anti-depressants in Fillory, and it was in times like these that Eliot very badly wanted to shatter every single mosaic tile into a million pieces, grab Quentin, and get them both the fuck back to Earth where there were people who could actually _help his boyfriend_. He felt useless, _worse_ than useless, every time Quentin left a plate of food undisturbed, or curled away from his touch.

"I was going to ask if you and Quentin wanted to join my family for the summer solstice festival," Arielle said. "It's not until next month, so I'm sure Quentin will be feeling well enough by then."

Eliot tried to smile genuinely at her, blinking back his exhaustion and worry. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great, Ari. I'll ask him."

Arielle frowned, studying his face for a moment, and then she slid off of the bench and scooted over to sit net to Eliot on the mosaic, putting an arm around him, tilting her head against his shoulder. It was one of the things that endeared Eliot to Arielle the most - she was just as tactile as he and Quentin were, letting casual touch impart the depth of true and supportive friendship. Arielle wasn't really anything like Margo, but there was a similar free spirit and easy physicality to both of them that Eliot loved.

"He's so lucky to have you, Eliot," Arielle said, resting against him. "I hope you know that."

"I'm the lucky one," Eliot said, meaning it. "I just don't want to fail him."

"As long as you stay, as long as you _try_, you could never fail him."

Eliot let himself be comforted for a bit, tipping his head to rest on top of Arielle's. They sat out in the sun and munched on peaches for a while, and then Arielle stood and dusted off her skirts, prepared to continue on her rounds.

"I'll come back through in a few days. Tell Quentin I'm sorry I missed him."

Eliot knew that what Quentin was going through wasn't likely to be permanent. Generally within a couple of days he'd claw his way out of the worst of the stupor, becoming soft and affectionate and apologetic in the aftermath of his gloom. But this time seemed different, somehow - Quentin _did_ eventually get out of bed on his own initiative, and actually ate breakfast without being prompted, two days after Arielle's visit. But before Eliot could be really relieved, he realized that Quentin was still in something of a mood.

A twitchy, angry, frantic sort of mood that, while worrying in its own way, was also setting Eliot's teeth on edge.

Quentin complained about _everything_ \- the hotness of the day, the blandness of the food, the scratchiness of a new shirt Eliot had recently purchased for him in town, and, most of all, the futility of their task. Every time he grimaced at his plate of food, or sighed huffily at another failed mosaic pattern, Eliot felt something ugly and insecure grow inside of him. As much as he told himself that this wasn't about him personally, Quentin's sudden impatience with every aspect of their lives together was still painful.

"Great, another one for the reject pile," Quentin hissed through his teeth as yet another pattern failed to yield results. He started yanking up the tiles angrily, and Eliot stooped to help him, keeping his mouth shut. "God, this is so fucking pointless."

"We could take a break," Eliot suggested, without much hope. No matter what he offered - taking a break when they'd been working too hard, or getting back to work after a break, it was always the wrong thing to say.

"Like we haven't been wasting enough of our time lately," Quentin snapped.

_This is not about you_, Eliot reminded himself for the millionth time that day. "Okay. Sorry for trying," he muttered, unable to help himself.

Quentin rolled his eyes at him, still yanking up the tiles with much more force than was necessary. "If we don't keep our focus, we're never going to figure this out, and we're never going to be able to escape from this goddamn hellhole."

Okay, now _that_ one stung. "What a charming description of the home we've worked so hard to build for ourselves," he said, low and gravelly.

"You know what I mean," Quentin said, dismissive.

"Do I?"

"Oh, come on, El," Quentin said, standing up after stacking up another tower of tiles. "Like you want to be here any more than I do. Don't you ever think about just saying _fuck it_ and getting out of here?"

On a different day, a better day, this would have been typical griping. They both needed to let off steam sometimes, to rail against the futility of their task, the growing sense that they'd been given an unbeatable game to play for the amusement of capricious gods. But today, after days of Quentin being a whiny little bitch, and Eliot tip-toeing around him to try and avoid a fight, it was just too much. It felt like a rejection of everything they'd built together, of the home where Eliot was happiest.

"Not really, no," Eliot bit out. "We've got a quest, in case you've forgotten."

Quentin rolled his eyes. "Oh the _quest_. Right. Because that's been going so well for us so far."

"We could be done tomorrow for all you know. We can't just throw away all this time we've invested," Eliot said, finally losing the battle against raising his voice. "You want to live your life, live it here."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what that means."

Eliot turned away from him, biting down on harsher words. _You're not starting a fight right now. This is not about you_. _This is temporary._

From behind him, he heard a clatter of tiles and whirled around to see Quentin standing there, sullen defiance on his face, as one of the stacks of puzzle pieces cascaded into a messy and disorganized pile.

"Oops."

"You're such a goddamn brat," Eliot said, finally indulging in his anger. His heart hurt, and he felt insecure and uncertain. Anger felt better, sharper, clearer, than any of the other emotions available to him. "What happened to your whole _let's get out of our shells_ project? I thought we were _building a life_."

"You're being a dick," Quentin said, like _Eliot _was the one being unreasonable. Jesus Christ. "And I am _trying_. Does that mean I'm not allowed to miss home?"

"It's the way you talk about it, Q," Eliot said, not sure where the words were coming from and not sure how to stop them. "Like this place is a goddamn prison, like you - like you don't want to be here with _me_ \- I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been working my ass off to make this place livable, and - "

"I _know_ that," Quentin snapped, and then he blinked, and his bratty expression fell away, something forlorn and tragic filling his eyes. "I know that," he repeated, low.

"Then _what_ is up your ass?" Eliot asked, testily.

"I - I'm tired," Quentin said, but Eliot was done letting him get away from this confrontation. They might as well get it out in the open before one of them crossed a line.

"I'm tired too, Quentin," he said, hard and unyielding.

Quentin squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed a hand hard against his forehead, like he was trying to scrub away dark thoughts. Eliot's hands twitched - he wanted to go over to him and wrap him up in his arms, smell the spot behind his ear, feel his body, hear his heart. It was an annoyingly tender impulse, but even in the height of his frustration, he hated seeing Quentin looking so obviously forlorn.

"I... had a dream about my dad," Quentin said finally. Eliot froze. "It was - he wasn't even in the dream, exactly, but I was back at home, and I kept thinking he was in the other room and I'd go to look for him and he wasn't there. And then I'd go outside and I'd call for him, and everyone was there, my mom and Molly, Jules, even people who never even met my dad. Margo. Penny. Alice."

Eliot felt his heart stutter in his chest, the way it always did when he thought of Margo. But Quentin wasn't done. "And I knew that my dad was in trouble, that he needed me, but nobody could tell me where he was or what had happened. And I just kept getting more and more freaked out, and I knew if I found him it would be alright, but I _couldn't_, and - " Quentin cut himself off with an angry snarl, tugging his hand hard through his hair in a way that made Eliot wince. "What if he's - El, what if he's dead? I'm probably never going to see my own father again, and I've been so busy _building a life_ for myself here that I've hardly bothered to think about him in months."

"Oh, Q," he said, as understanding flooded through him. He felt all of the tension and anger bleed away all at once, and he rushed forward, relieved when Quentin didn't pull away. "Q, I'm sorry."

Quentin was silent for a long moment, as Eliot rubbed a slow and steady hand down his back. "No, I'm sorry," he finally mumbled into Eliot's collarbone. "I was being an asshole."

"Well, yes," Eliot admitted. "But I suppose we're all entitled on occasion."

Quentin laughed, but it sounded closer to a sob. "You're so patient, you're so good to me, El." He lifted his head and kissed Eliot. It had been days since they'd kissed properly and it was just so _good_, toe-curling and life-affirming and everything else he'd never known could actually happen in a kiss until he'd experienced it with Q.

Eliot eased away from the kiss with some reluctance, pressing their foreheads tight together. "I love you," he said. "I know how much you're trying. And remember, we both agreed we're allowed to fuck up sometimes, as long as we - "

"Fix it together," Quentin finished for him, pecking him lightly on the corner of his mouth. Then he sighed, tucking his head underneath Eliot's chin, where he fit so perfectly. "I hate feeling guilty," he whispered, a sacred confession. "I'm so happy with you. I wake up most mornings just in awe of how much I love my life. And then I think about everything we left behind..."

"I know," Eliot said. "I know, I'm right there with you." He kissed along Quentin's hairline, smelling his newly washed hair. Quentin had skipped out on personal hygiene for a couple of days there, but he was out of the woods on that account, at least. "We deserve to be happy, Q. We've fucking _worked_ for it. We can miss them and work hard to get home, and still have a life here. You're the one who convinced me of that."

"I'm mercurial, El, what can I say?" Quentin said, a weak attempt at a joke, but it made Eliot smile. "I know I'm the one who pushed us to settle in Fillory. But I need you to remind me of that sometimes, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay. Whatever you need, Q, it's _always_ okay. I want to give you whatever I can."

"In general," Quentin said, slow and careful, "I think I need to be more conscious about thinking and talking about what we've left behind. You know, talking about my dad, and Jules - getting you to talk about Margo. I don't want to forget them, and I think it might be easier if we let ourselves _acknowledge _it more."

It sounded difficult - Eliot's chest always felt tight whenever Margo came up. It was easier to push thoughts of her aside. But he'd just told Q he'd do whatever he needed, and he'd meant it. So, he nodded.

"In specific right _now_, though," Quentin said, his voice dropping lower. "I need you to distract me. Get me out of my own head."

"Oh yeah?" Eliot said. "And did you have any suggestions on how I might accomplish such a thing?"

Quentin grinned at him, going for wicked and landing somewhere closer to _earnestly adorable_. He took Eliot's hand and pulled him inside.

One of the (many, many) reasons Eliot loved Quentin was for how varied their sex life turned out to be. Sometimes, Q wanted to be bossed around, and on rare occasions he wanted to be the one doing the bossing. Sometimes their coupling was frantic and animal - Eliot shoving Quentin's pants down just far enough to get inside him, using magic to open him up, too impatient for prep - hard, rough fucks that left him feeling emotionally tender and extra affectionate only after they were over. Sometimes, Q wanted to fuck _him_, work him over until he was leaking and begging for it. But tonight, it was something else - something they both needed - a slow, cautious build, ardent movements building to the type of orgasms that crested so gently and slowly that they left every nerve ending alight, and lasted for a long, long time.

Quentin clutched Eliot tight to him when it was over, trembling, and Eliot had to blink back the burn of tears in his eyes. It shouldn't have been possible to miss someone so much after just a handful of days without physical intimacy, but Quentin was a part of his body now, as necessary as a limb. Or lungs. Or his fucking _heart_. He breathed deeply a few times, kissing Quentin through the last of the aftershocks, and then shifted their positions so he could lie on his back with Quentin curled up next to him, their legs entwined under the sheets.

Eliot thought about continuing their conversation, asking Quentin more about his dream, his father, the other people in his life that he was missing. But Q had asked him for distraction, and sometimes they both needed a lot of processing time before they talked things over. They'd said the important stuff already, anyway.

"Arielle invited us to go to the solstice festival with her family in a couple of weeks," Eliot said instead.

"Oh yeah? What do you think?"

"It might be good to get away from the mosaic for a few days," Eliot sighed. Quentin disentangled himself from Eliot just enough to sit up and look down at him.

"I've been neglecting the quest," Q said, and Eliot heard the slightest note of guilt in his tone.

"You were having a bad brain day. Or uh - week," Eliot said. "Don't you think getting some space from all of this would be good? Like a factory reset?"

"Hmm. Like a couple's retreat," Quentin said, nuzzling back down into Eliot's chest.

"Well, sure. Except we've got to be Ari's dates."

"I thought her whole family was going to be there."

"Yeah, but her _family_ can't be her _wing-men_, Quentin. We've got to find her a suitable lad."

Quentin laughed and leaned back down to Eliot's chest, pressing a few kisses along his collarbone. It felt amazing, in that way that only Quentin's touch had ever felt, like everything inside of him was rushing and seeping up to the surface, tingling and bright. "Any candidates in mind?" Quentin asked, still kissing across his chest.

"What about Peter the carpenter?"

Quentin snorted, ruining the nice skin tingles slightly. He sighed, resting his head firmly on Eliot's chest, his hands stroking soothingly up and down his torso. "Peter the carpenter is _gay_, El. I practically had to scare him off of you with a pitchfork the last time we went for drinks in town."

"You don't _know_ that," Eliot protested, a bubble of laughter forming in his chest. "He could be one of those - oh, what's the word? _Bisexuals_ that I've heard so much about?"

Quentin's soothing hands immediately stiffened, and he poked into Eliot's side, hard. "You're a real funny guy," he said, and despite the overt sarcasm, there was genuine amusement in his voice. "Fine. We can ask Arielle if she wants us to hook her up with a guy who's clearly obsessed with you."

"I love jealous Quentin," Eliot sighed contentedly. He grabbed at Quentin's hands to stop him from poking again.

"I'm not jealous," Quentin said petulantly. "I'm not precious about monogamy, honestly. It's just - that guy is such a meathead, and he saw the two of us making out so he clearly _knew_ that we were together, and he kept _touching_ you _anyway_."

_Not precious about monogamy._ Eliot filed that thought away for later consideration, his mouth lifting into a happy smile. Maybe Peter wasn't the best candidate, but that didn't mean they couldn't get a little creative on occasion.

"So, the festival?" Eliot asked.

"Sure. We can tell Arielle we accept her invitation when she comes by on her rounds." Quentin yawned, his breath warm across Eliot's chest. "God, I know I've been moping around in bed all week, but - "

"But you're exhausted," Eliot finished for him. "I'm choosing to take it as a compliment."

Quentin grinned sleepily and nuzzled his nose against Eliot's skin. "Thank you, El."

"For the amazing sex, or...?"

"For the sex, yeah," Quentin said, sincere. "And for your patience. Sometimes I think I really don't deserve you."

"Q..."

"But then most of the time you make me believe that I'm worthy of this. Which is honestly something I thought I'd never have."

"If there's anyone here who's unworthy..." Eliot said, feeling choked up. God, it broke his heart that Quentin didn't see himself the way Eliot did.

"I've felt like a burden my whole life," Quentin said, now tracing little patterns into Eliot's chest with one finger. "And that's not anybody's fault but my own, really, and my fucked up brain, but it is how I felt. But with you... I like it when you take care of me and somehow I believe you when you say you're happy to do it."

"I am," Eliot said. "And you take care of me, too, Quentin. That's why this works."

Quentin sighed again, content and warm. It wasn't even fully dark outside, but Eliot felt sleep start to overtake him as well.

"Goodnight, Eliot," he heard Quentin say, but he was asleep before he could respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains no real sex scenes but two separate post-coital cuddle scenes, so... you get to decide what that says about me.


	3. Chapter Three - In Which a Friendship Grows, and a Proposition is Made

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those curious, I've set myself some very specific rules for this fic: I cannot directly, overtly, contradict what we see onscreen during 3x05. However, as you read on I think you will find that the spirit of what we see in the episode itself has been altered in some pretty major ways. All of that is to say... Arielle is a big part of this story, but not in the way she is typically portrayed. I have loved so many different fan interpretations of Arielle and how her relationships with Q and Eliot work. I wanted to try something different from any other story I've seen. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Also, I must confess that there is a brief blink-and-you-miss-it reference to HMGFanfic's excellent novel-length fic _Something Good_ here. It's nothing more than a quick name-drop, in a different context entirely, but it's there on purpose, as a tribute to my absolute favorite fic in this fandom. If you somehow haven't read it already, you should go check it out - it is the slow-burn-to-end-all-slow-burns and I'm in love with it.

**QUENTIN**

Time and calendar calculations were a bit weird in Fillory, but after a while Quentin and Eliot had devised a pretty good Fillory-to-Earth conversion system, and Quentin had written it out and posted it in the cottage. In the week leading up to what would have been Margo's birthday, Eliot started to go quiet. Last year they hadn't had their calendaring system down yet, so the specific date had gone unremarked upon, but this time around was different - there was something so strange about missing a person who hadn't been born yet, who you had no way of contacting, whose life might very well be moving at a different pace through time than your own.

Quentin was debating between pinning Eliot down and forcing him to talk about it, or just letting him have his sullen breakdown in peace. But Eliot, true to his word about _trying hard_ and _building a life _and _practicing good communication_, actually made Quentin's decision for him. The morning of what would have been Margo Hanson's birthday, Eliot grabbed Quentin's wrist just after breakfast to stop him from getting up from the table.

"I think you should let me fuck you, in honor of Margo," Eliot said.

Quentin laughed. Leave it to Eliot to make such a sentence sound deadly serious, even as his eyes sparkled with amusement. "Um. And how would this be different than any of the other times that I 'let you' fuck me?"

"Well," Eliot said, slyly. "I thought about what Margo would have wanted, and figured that a bit of debauchery was really the greatest gift I could offer her."

"I'm intrigued," Quentin said, standing and pressing himself into Eliot, arms around his waist. "Tell me more."

Eliot disentangled Quentin's arms from around him and walked carefully over to their bed in the corner. He bent to take something off of the small shelf sticking out of the wall next to the bed, and turned around holding a couple of long strips of fabric.

"You want to tie me up?" Quentin asked, eyebrows raised. They'd talked about this, but it hadn't happened yet.

"Only if you're game," Eliot said, shrugging.

Quentin bit back on a smile. "Well since it's for _Margo_, I suppose I can lie back and think of Fillory - " he yelped, cut off mid-sentence, as Eliot darted forward and tugged eagerly on his arm.

"Get naked."

Margo's birthday was officially Quentin's favorite holiday.

* * *

They took breaks to hydrate, and made themselves leave the cottage for one mosaic pattern as per the minimum requirements they'd set for themselves, but Eliot really did seem determined to set some sort of a record in honor of his absent platonic soulmate.

Some time in the early afternoon, Quentin found himself pinned under Eliot for the fourth time that day. He was covered in sweat, trying in vain to make Eliot speed things along, but Eliot seemed content to drag this one out. He wasn't even fucking him, just pressing onto him and sliding their cocks against one another, in a steady, undulating rhythm that was driving Quentin out of his mind, while not being hard enough to provide adequate friction.

"You," Quentin moaned. "Are a _tease_."

"Can one really be said to be a tease," Eliot said, looping strands of Quentin's hair around his fingers and pressing feather-light kisses across his nose and cheekbones, "if one has already made his partner come multiple times?" He sounded aggravatingly calm, which would just _not do_.

Quentin squirmed up into him, adjusting his hips just slightly until they were more fully aligned. He brought a hand up to scratch and tug through Eliot's hair, and was rewarded with a hitched breath and a low moan. "I love it when you pull my hair," Eliot said.

"You don't say?" Quentin said, doing it again. "I never would have guessed."

"Do you remember..." Eliot started, then got distracted as Quentin scratched his fingernails down his back, squeezed his ass, then slid his hands back up again, setting his own rhythm in time to the grinding of their hips. "Mmmm."

"Do I remember?" Quentin prompted, sliding his lips along Eliot's jaw. "Oh, _shit_, El, you feel - "

Eliot let out a strained laugh. "Do you remember the first time we did this?"

Quentin hummed in an exaggerated expression of feigned ignorance. "You mean... here? Or at Brakebills, fucked up out of our minds with Margo?"

"Yeah, that one," Eliot said, increasing the tempo of his hips for a few moments until Quentin couldn't stop himself from letting out a needy little whine. Eliot fucking loved it when he was loud, though, so the result was a few grappling moments where Eliot lost control of the slow pace he'd been trying to set, breathing harsh into Quentin's ear, biting at the lobe and holding the back of Quentin's neck firm with one of his hands. "God, Q. _Fuck_," he said, trembling as he forced himself to slow back down. Quentin moaned in a mix of disappointment and excitement.

"What about it?" he asked, breath catching.

"What?" Eliot said, dazed. Quentin smirked.

"That night, with Margo."

"Right," Eliot said, laughing at himself. "Right. I know so much about that night was - you know, bad. Or at least the consequences were. But - there's so much I remember, so much I think about. I'd wanted you, Q. I'd wanted you and there you were, wanting me back."

For a moment, Quentin felt a wave of melancholy rise inside of him as he thought of the look on Alice's face the next morning. But instead of dwelling on that, and on all of the truly painful shit that had preceded and followed it, he breathed in deep, smelling sweat and sex and _Eliot_, and letting himself float on the pleasure of being kept away from the edge, his cock beginning to leak against him where it was crushed between their stomachs. "I remember," he said. "I remember touching you, worried I was about to wake up and realize it was all a dream."

"And Margo," Eliot said, his voice catching. "I woke up and you were on top of her on the bed, kissing her like your life depended on it."

"I may have been on top of her, but she was steering," Quentin said, remembering with a fond smile. "God, she's bossy in bed."

"Not only in bed," Eliot pointed out, and then grunted when Quentin bit his jaw. "Feels so good, Q."

Quentin bit harder, moving his lips and tongue and teeth down Eliot's neck, setting to work. Eliot's hands had moved down to Quentin's hips, pinning them to the mattress and giving him even less leverage to grind up into Eliot. It was the best kind of torture.

"And then you noticed I was awake," Eliot said, continuing his reminisce.

"Yeah," Quentin said. "I was about two seconds away from freaking out and bolting, and - "

"I put my hand on the back of your neck," Eliot said, "And you went still, like I suddenly had all the power. It was fucking hot."

"I kissed you," Quentin said, and raised his head to demonstrate, their lips sliding together, spit-slick and warm. "I knew you'd be a good kisser, but _Jesus_, El, you were - "

"So were you," Eliot said, and then they were silent for a moment, breathing and licking at each other's mouths. "God, you were so overwhelmed, it was adorable."

"Not the descriptor one might hope to achieve," Quentin said, laughing a little sheepishly. "But can you blame me? You and Margo together, you're like every nerdy queer boy's wet dream."

"Margo took charge, of course," Eliot said. "She pulled you back away from me and you - you _whimpered_, like you wanted to keep touching me, like you needed it."

"Ungh, fuck, El." Quentin felt hot all over. He had tried really hard not to think about that night, for obvious reasons - it felt wrong to have enjoyed himself so much when he had been hurting Alice. But here, all of that felt very far away, and he let himself sink in to the remembrance of that night, how worked up he'd been just from kissing Margo and Eliot both, the hard lines of Eliot's body and the soft curves of Margo's pressing against him.

"She undressed you and laid you out on the center of the bed," Eliot said, still rocking his hips into Quentin's in that aggravatingly slow, steady way. But his breathing was starting to go hoarse, and Quentin pressed his advantage, writhing and jerking up into him as best as he could with Eliot's strong hands still keeping him pinned. Eliot choked back on a moan, but kept talking. "You looked delicious, laid out like that, I wanted to fucking devour you."

"I wanted - " Quentin tried to say, and then gave up, his vision going blurry, his breath catching in his throat. "Fuck, El, _fuck_, come on, I need - "

"Do you remember what happened next?" Eliot asked, ignoring his pleading. And Quentin did remember, of _course_ he did, but he wanted to hear Eliot's voice. Wanted to hear him describe every second.

"Remind me," Quentin gasped, his fingers digging deep into Eliot's back.

"She rode you," Eliot said, mouthing at Quentin's jaw, his voice sinful and chocolate against his skin. "She pinned you to the bed and did almost all of the work, and at first, you couldn't take your eyes off of her tits."

Quentin laughed, a touch of embarrassment creeping his way in, but he tilted his head and bowed his back, letting himself let out a loud moan, smiling in triumph when Eliot's slow rhythm stuttered for a moment. "What else?" he said.

"You reached for me," Eliot groaned, sliding against Quentin and then grinding down just a little harder, smearing precum into Quentin's stomach. "You reached for me and kissed me, shameless, like it was the only thing in the world you wanted."

"It was. It was, El," Quentin said. "I wanted all of you. Everything. I was inside Margo and she felt so goddamn incredible but all I wanted was you inside of _me_. I wanted you in my mouth. I wanted - "

"Oh, fuck, Quentin," Eliot said, his voice gone suddenly rough. "_Fuck_, what you do to me - "

Quentin moved his hands lower, pressing them into Eliot's ass to increase the pressure between them even further. "And then what happened?" he asked, trying to keep his breath from hitching.

"Margo grabbed my arm," Eliot said, starting to shake. "She brought my hand down to where the two of you were connected."

"You got her off with your fingers," Quentin gasped. "She looked fucking beautiful."

"You both did," Eliot said. Quentin could hear a tremor in his voice, a bit of longing, regret, mixing in with the pleasure. He nudged at Eliot's face with his nose until Eliot lifted to meet his eyes.

"Margo climbed off of me," Quentin continued the narration, lifting frantically into Eliot now, his hand pulling and squeezing at the skin on his ass and lower back. "And I was still hard - I wanted to come, but I held off because - "

"Because you wanted to come on my cock," Eliot said. There was a tinge of desperation in his tone now, and he brought his lips down, kissing Quentin rough and dirty as the rhythm between them started to deteriorate, both of them grinding into one another with increased ardor. "Oh, God. _Fuck_, I'm close - "

"I sucked your cock first," Quentin said, determined now to finish the memory. "I was so hard I thought I was going to come just from that."

"Margo watched us," Eliot said. "She watched us and touched herself while I opened you up on my tongue and - then I - th-then - _f-fuck_, _fuck _\- " Eliot choked off mid-sentence, shuddering, and Quentin felt him come, the wetness splattering onto both of their stomachs and Quentin's aching cock.

"El. _El, God_," Quentin said, thrusting shamelessly up into him.

"And then I fucked you," Eliot said, low and fervent, his breathing still coming out in harsh gasps, hot against Quentin's ear. "You were so pretty for me, Q, so eager. You took me so well, like you'd been waiting for me, you were so _good,_ baby - "

Quentin's vision whited out. His entire body went into spasm. He pushed up hard enough into Eliot that he actually lifted him off of the bed for a moment, as his orgasm crashed over and under and through him, his cock jerking and spilling between their stomachs. He heard himself making a sound, something low and aching and continuous as he thrust a few more times into the slippery wetness between them, his heart pounding hard in his temples.

"Holy shit," Quentin managed, after a few minutes, when his brain came back on line.

"_Jesus_," Eliot agreed, kissing Quentin all over his face. "Jesus, Q, that was so hot."

"I think we did Margo proud."

Eliot twisted his hands in a familiar series of tuts, cleaning them up and allowing them to stay pressed together without the wetness of come and lube between them. "I miss her," he said, but he sounded wistful and sated, instead of dour and miserable.

"Me too," Quentin said. "I miss all of them so much."

For several minutes they were both silent, Quentin's skin still buzzing in pleasant little waves of endorphins. And then Eliot shifted minutely so he wasn't pressing so much of his weight into Quentin, giving him a gentle kiss on the side of his mouth. Quentin could feel just the tiniest bit of tension creeping in to Eliot's body, and kept quiet, waiting for whatever he was going to say.

"Would you ever want to do something like that?" Eliot asked finally.

"Like what?"

"Like - with Margo. With someone else."

Quentin blinked. He probably should have seen this coming, after the day's variety of debauched activities. But being tied up and edged and subjected to magical sensitivity enhancements by his partner was one thing. Inviting someone else into their bed was something else entirely. That said... the idea wasn't at all unpleasant. Eliot was experienced with this kind of thing, and he knew what Quentin liked.

"Yeah, maybe," he said, and felt Eliot relax. "Is this a Margo-inspired inquiry, or have you been thinking about it for a while?"

Eliot shrugged against him. His hands were in Quentin's hair, playing with the strands again. "I want us to have everything we want together. Nothing's off the table. Just so you know."

Quentin thought about that for a moment, and then tilted his head to kiss Eliot's collarbone. "Okay. Okay, yeah, we can talk about it. Did you have a candidate in mind?"

"I figured we could scope out options at the summer festival," Eliot said. "Find someone, someone we both like - "

"You can cross Peter the carpenter right off your list, mister," Quentin said, and Eliot laughed, bright and joyful, into the side of Quentin's temple.

"Oh, shucks. In that case, we might as well call the whole thing off."

* * *

**ELIOT**

The festival took place in a large field just on the outskirts of Langdale, the sloping grasses turning to smooth pebbles down by the edge of the river that wound its way through the lush valley. It was the perfect day for an outdoor party - the sky clear and the air warm and dry. When Eliot, Quentin, Arielle, her parents, her three brothers and their spouses and kids, an aunt, and two cousins all made their way through the welcoming archway, they could already see several youngsters splashing in the river, even in the pre-noon less-than-scorching weather.

Rodney, Arielle's eldest brother and Eliot's favorite, immediately scooped his son into his arms and pointed towards a row of booths. "They've got candied apples!" he declared, and it was hard to tell which of the two of them were more excited at the prospect.

"I'm going to check for some new sewing patterns," Rodney's wife Kasha said, peeling off from the group with her six-year-old daughter clutching at her skirts.

The rest of the group scattered, peeling off in twos and threes to start exploring the Festival's offerings.

"This place is huge," Quentin said, staring around in wonder. It _wasn't_, not by most standards, but Eliot still knew what Quentin meant - it looked as if every single person from Langdale and all of the surrounding farmland were in attendance.

"Traveling salesmen come from all over," Arielle said. "I can't believe you two didn't come last year."

"We were hard at work," Eliot said. A year ago, they'd still been pretending they were going to leave any minute. Spending a whole day on travel just to attend a local village party had seemed like a frivolous waste of time.

"Well, I'm glad you managed to get away this year," Arielle said, smiling simply. There was a shrewd gleam to her eyes that told Eliot she knew they were hiding something. Quentin and Eliot's determination to complete the mosaic couldn't really be written off as a whim - they'd been at it for close to two years now. But Arielle seemed to sense that if she was meant to know more, she would eventually.

The festival was a huge success - any remaining cobwebs of Quentin's latest depressive episode seemed to lift away from his mind as the day went on, and to Eliot, the whole day would have been worth it just for the sight of his smile. They ate lunch with Arielle's family, and then went down to the edge of the river to lounge about with Arielle's brothers and cousins, while all of the various kids splashed around in the shallows, joined in by Rodney, who was honestly just another kid in an adult body.

After lunch, Eliot had left Quentin chatting with Ona, one of the cousins, while he found himself in conversation with Langdale's tavern owner and Ostrich the Bear, discussing the merits of various different varieties of mead and ale. Every drink he'd ever had in Fillory was incredibly unrefined to Eliot's discerning palette, but it was fun to hear true enthusiasts debate the minutia of various brewing and storing practices.

The day lengthened - sugary treats were consumed by all, small trinkets and works of art were purchased and hidden away to be given as presents later. Quentin entertained a group of kids for a while with card tricks, using a set of Tarot cards, the owner of which seemed too in awe of the magic in front of her to complain about the misuse of her mystical property. Eliot and Arielle wandered around through the booths, Arielle laughing in escalating mortification as Eliot pointed out increasingly unlikely suitors for her to pursue. Towards dusk, some of the families with small kids dispersed back towards their homes or to the nearby village of tents that had been set up as temporary lodging for those who had traveled more than a day's journey for the festival.

"The bonfire's the best part," Arielle told Q and Eliot, as the three of them found themselves lounging together on a blanket in the grass, a short way away from an impressive juggling duo. "There's live music and everyone dances and lets their hair down." She patted at her own tight braid, which had started the day in pristine condition and now spilled out into little tufts and fly-away strands. Quentin, carefree and happy on a full stomach of honeyed mead and grilled steak and veggie kebab, lifted a hand to tuck one such escaped strand behind Arielle's ear, and Arielle smiled in gratitude at him before raising a sardonic eyebrow at Quentin's own thoroughly messy bun.

Eliot caught her eye and winked, and then yanked on the cord still valiantly attempting to hold Quentin's hair back, letting it spill out and around Q's face. Unable to help himself, he dug his fingers into the soft strands and massaged Quentin's scalp. Quentin let out a lovely little moan and relaxed boneless against him so that he was resting fully back against Eliot's chest. Eliot ducked to kiss just behind his ear, his heart doing that _overflowing with love_ thing that it did all of the time now. It was a nice feeling, one he'd chosen long ago not to resist.

He looked up and caught something contemplative and fond in Arielle's eyes, but when he raised an eyebrow in question, she just shook her head and gave a small smile before turning away and scanning the crowd. "Look, the performers are setting up."

They sat and watched for a while once the cheerful music started, as Arielle's family spun around the fire with the rest of the crowd, and then Eliot bullied Quentin into dancing with him for a while, and nudged Arielle into the arms of a burly looking farm-boy. But later, when Eliot was standing off to the side and enjoying some magically-altered mead, he watched Arielle offer Quentin a hand and pull him back into the circle of dancing. Quentin laughed sheepishly as he stumbled over the steps. Both of them, their hair free and whipping around their faces as they danced, the firelight making their skin flush and glow... just from an aesthetic perspective, they looked beautiful together.

Eliot waited for this to make him feel like shit, but - it didn't. Instead, a stirring of something, of excitement and possibility, warmed the blood thrumming through his veins. He remembered how aching and hot and _beautiful _it had been to watch Margo sink onto Quentin, hear the punched out sound they had both made when she had been fully seated - remembered the sensation of kissing Quentin through his gasping, unraveling breaths while a beautiful woman made him incoherent with pleasure. He swallowed, blinking away the memory of Margo's striking face, and saw Arielle laugh at something Quentin had whispered into her ear, before grabbing his arm and tugging him with her away from the circle, back towards where Eliot was waiting for them both.

Well. That could be interesting.

* * *

He waited a couple of weeks to broach the subject with Quentin. It seemed important somehow to wait, to examine every nook and cranny of his own possible responses and reactions, weed out any suggestion of jealousy or less-than-scrupulous reasoning. He didn't want to push Quentin towards Arielle. Arielle was a nice and pretty girl that Quentin could very well have fallen in love with under different circumstances. But Quentin was in love with _him_. Quentin wanted Eliot, wanted to stay with him for the rest of his life. They hadn't even talked about it in specific terms like that, but as the one-year anniversary of their first night together in Fillory crept closer, Eliot grew only more certain that their relationship was solid. It might be confounding to him, sometimes, why Quentin would choose him when he could have anyone he wanted. But he did believe in it. Wholeheartedly.

They were working on a mosaic pattern, sorting by color for a fresh attempt on a bright morning at the very tail end of summer. Eliot stopped to watch Quentin for a moment, skeptical as always that this person was actually his, and that he wasn't fucking it up.

"Hey Q?" he asked, and Quentin looked up from his work, a couple of rusty pink tiles in his hands. He was smiling in that automatic affectionate way that made Eliot's stomach swoop when it caught him unawares.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think of Arielle?"

"Um. She's great?" Quentin said, scrunching his nose up in confusion. "Like, how do you mean, in general? She's a good friend, we're lucky to have her."

That was another thing about Q - he defaulted always to sincere. He could snark and eye-roll with the best of them, but when asked a straight-forward question, Quentin generally gave an earnest answer, with none of the protective armor that Eliot used in most social interactions, even to this day. Eliot gave up all pretense of sorting the green tiles from the blue, and scooted over to Quentin so they were sitting right next to each other near the center of the mosaic.

"Yeah, she is great," Eliot agreed, smiling at him. Quentin blinked, confusion still evident on his face, but he raised a hand and brushed a curl out of Eliot's eyes on instinct, a silent greeting now that he was close enough to touch.

"Oh, that reminds me," Quentin said abruptly, dropping his eyes back to his work, clearly moving past Eliot's nonsensical inquiry. "Ari says Melba has a couple of hens we can take to start a coup here, she told me last time she passed through."

Melba (_"like the toast?" Eliot had muttered to Quentin upon introductions, to which Q had gifted him a sharp jab in the ribs_) was one of Arielle's cousins, who had a farm a little farther afield from the valley. Quentin had decided that they should produce their own eggs and poultry instead of relying on magically-created protein, which never tasted right, or the market in Langdale, which was a little far away to do a last minute milk run, so to speak.

Eliot shuddered dramatically at the idea of a chicken coup. The vegetable patch was bad enough . "You're giving me childhood trauma flashbacks, Q."

Quentin's eyes flashed with concern for one tiny moment, until he ascertained that Eliot was ninety-nine percent joking. Then he patted Eliot on the side of the face, a little harder than was maybe strictly necessary. "You poor baby."

"What I meant," Eliot said, sighing and forging ahead. "Is what do you think of Arielle for our little threesome idea?"

Quentin froze. A frown appeared on his face, more contemplative than anything else. But then a furrow of worry appeared on his brow. He reached unconsciously for Eliot's hand and started dusting kisses along his knuckles, mouthing at the skin of his fingers like he just needed something to occupy his time while he thought. Eliot felt his blood rush down from his head, and he sagged forward, nuzzling his nose into the side of Quentin's temple while Quentin bit contemplatively at the pad of Eliot's thumb. He fucking adored this man, and the way that Eliot's body became an object of convenient and casual interest whenever they were within touching distance. It was one of the most endearing things about Quentin, although it was slightly disruptive to his mental acuity when he was trying to have a serious conversation. What had they been talking about again?

"I'm not saying _no_," Quentin said finally. Oh, right. Arielle. "But I want to make sure you're asking me for the right reasons." He dropped Eliot's hand and scrambled to his feet, taking a few steps away. Eliot followed, blinking a few times as he tried to zero back in on the conversation about their potential future debauchery.

"What would be the _right reasons_?" Eliot asked, grinning.

"That Arielle is our friend and we both like her and think she's hot and think it would be fun to invite her to join us sometime," Quentin said firmly. There was a determination behind his eyes that Eliot could easily read as slightly nervous, and he bit his own lip, then stepped forward and smudged his thumb in between Quentin's brows, smoothing away the lines.

"And what would be the _wrong _reason?" Eliot continued. Because clearly that was the real question at play, here.

Quentin took a deep breath. "The _wrong_ reason would be if you're under the misapprehension that this particular bisexual cannot survive on dick and dick alone."

That startled a laugh out of Eliot, because it was just so _Quentin_ to have understood the core of him so easily - but he sobered quickly, narrowing his eyes and studying Quentin's face intently. Finally, he shook his head, ducking a bit so he and Quentin were eye-to-eye. "No, Quentin. I swear to you that's not what's going on here."

"Are you sure? Because if there's even the slightest _hint_ of that - "

"I'm sure," Eliot said. He just had to kiss him, and so he did, letting the slow, sweet press of their lips erase the tension in Quentin's posture. "I'm sure, baby. You're fucking stuck with me, and I mean that."

Quentin let out a breath of air and tilted forward to rest his head against Eliot's sternum, his arms wrapping naturally around his waist. "Okay."

"I love you for asking," Eliot said. "You weren't wrong to check in with me. I know I haven't been the best, in the past, about - about that."

Quentin lifted his head to raise an ironic eyebrow at him. "Look at you, tap-dancing around a mention of your biphobia like a genuinely evolving adult."

"Oh, hush, you," Eliot said, reaching his long arm down to smack Quentin on the ass.

It _had_ been a bit of a check to Eliot's prejudices when, not too long after they'd arrived in Fillory of the past, Quentin had mentioned someone from his undergrad days, a guy named Ryan that he'd slept with a few times. For self-preservational reasons that Eliot hadn't wanted to examine too closely at the time, he'd made himself believe that Quentin was straight and only occasionally bendy - that the night he'd had with Eliot and Margo had been an anomaly. He'd blinked away his surprise and tried his best to act like the existence of _Ryan_ and a few other casual flings with men over the years didn't shift his entire understanding of Quentin as a person, but he had been less than successful at hiding his flustered nerves from Quentin.

This had resulted in a somewhat tetchy argument about Eliot respecting Q's sexuality, and the fact that Eliot didn't get to declare himself King of the Queers just because Quentin had mostly been with women. And Eliot, feeling tender and bruised in a way he didn't let himself think too hard about, had worked hard to reconstruct his mental image of his best friend to include _interested in dick_, without making it all about himself.

"Do you think Arielle would want to?" Quentin asked. He stepped back from Eliot slightly but kept his hands on Eliot's waist, tapping his fingers in thought. He sounded interested but cautious.

"I think she's definitely attracted to you," Eliot hedged. "And, I mean, who wouldn't be attracted to _me_?"

Quentin snorted, but then shrugged as if to say _fair point_. Eliot preened, his giant ego satisfied. "Okay, say she thinks we're both hot, and obviously _she_'s gorgeous - "

"And she feeds us," Eliot said, affecting a swooning, wistful tone of voice. Arielle could probably have won her way into anyone's heart that she so chose, with nothing but a basket of peaches and plums to her name.

"She does feed us," Quentin agreed, laughing. "And so it therefore follows that we should have sex with her?"

"Couldn't agree more," Eliot said, ignoring the questioning lilt to Quentin's words. Then he sighed, making himself be serious. "It's a thought, but if you think it would be weird, if you think it might jeopardize our existing relationship with her..."

"No," Quentin said, musing, "honestly you're probably right, I think she'd be up for it."

"Right? I totally think she would be," Eliot said. "I mean, we know she's not a prude, first of all. Some of the jokes she tells could give _me_ a run for my money. And she's been lonely since Lunk, and I'm pretty sure we all know what he was bringing to that relationship..."

"Arielle isn't hard up for sex," Quentin said, laughing. "She definitely doesn't need us to rescue her from involuntary celibacy."

Eliot chuckled, and found that his hands had worked their way into Quentin's hair. That seemed to happen a lot without his conscious thought. "True. But sometimes I think she looks at us, and..."

"Okay," Quentin said, a new decisiveness in his tone. "Okay, why not? We should ask her sometime."

Eliot smiled in triumph, already picturing it. "I think you should be the one to bring it up," he said.

Instantly, all of Quentin's calm contemplation vanished, to be replaced with confused horror. "_Me?_ Why me? You're better at this sort of thing!"

"At what sort of thing?" Eliot asked.

"At propositioning people, _duh_," Quentin said, and that really shouldn't have been cute but it _was_.

"Darling Q," Eliot said patiently, extracting his hands from Quentin's hair to rest them firmly on each shoulder. He ducked his head a little so that Quentin was forced to make eye contact. "I think it's safe to say that you and Arielle are both going to be more nervous about the idea than I am, which is _exactly_ why you two should be the ones to nail down the specifics. I'm not going through with this unless we can all three talk about it like adults."

Quentin opened and closed his mouth a couple of times like a fish, and then sighed, his shoulders drooping in defeat. "You're annoying when you make sense," Quentin mumbled, grumpy. Eliot just kissed him on the forehead.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

All things considered, talking with Arielle about a threesome with Eliot wasn't actually the most mortifying conversation he'd ever had. Beforehand, his brain had helpfully supplied him with a list of literally every awkward or painful interaction he'd ever had with a woman in his life, and while Eliot had tried valiantly to fuck him into a less anxious state of mind, he was still plenty jittery when the day finally arrived.

"Just ask her," Eliot said. "People make such a big deal out of sex but it doesn't have to be."

"It's a big deal with _you_," Quentin had said, snapping a little in his nerves, but that involuntary declaration had just made Eliot go all gooey and sweet, which, like, Quentin wasn't _complaining_ or anything, but still.

"You've had purely recreational sex before, though," Eliot finally said, after he'd finished kissing Q on the nose, the forehead, and every fingertip on both of his hands.

"Sure, but as hard as this might be for you to believe, I'm not usually the one initiating."

"That's the easiest thing in the world to believe, Q," Eliot said, cheerfully ignoring his sarcasm. "Oh, and you should kiss her."

"I - what?"

"Talk to her. Ask her if she wants to sleep with us. But don't make it sound like a business transaction. You've got to romance her, just a little bit."

"El..." Quentin said, a hot squirming of discomfort in his stomach. "El, I don't want to, you know - "

"I'm not telling you to lay her tenderly down on a bed of flowers and declare your undying love. I'm telling you to _kiss _the girl. Think of it as a compatibility test."

Quentin bit his lip, a thousand different thoughts swirling in his head, and then Eliot sighed, brushing his fingers along Quentin's hairline. "Q, if you're not comfortable with this, that's okay. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm trying to push you - "

"No," Quentin said at once. "No, I want this. It's like you said, nothing's off the table. I like trying new stuff with you."

That earned him a sweet smile, one that Quentin almost would have classified as _wholesome_ if not for the topic at hand.

And so when Arielle had next stopped by, Quentin had invited her to stay and spend the afternoon at the cottage. They left Eliot with the basket of peaches and plums, and took a meandering walk through the woods to leave him to his work on the mosaic.

"He's probably going to lay down and take a nap in the sun the second we're fully out of sight," Quentin said. "He's got no work ethic whatsoever."

"Oh, I can't imagine that's true," Arielle said, putting a hand on Quentin's elbow and squeezing. "You seem like a full time job."

"Rude," Quentin said, laughing. The thing about Arielle was, she was easy to talk to. Quentin had never been all that comfortable in social situations, and one of the things that drew him so strongly to Eliot had been the fact that he knew how to navigate and weather all of Quentin's awkwardness, to smooth away the uncomfortable edges of conversation and leave something pure and joyful in its stead. Arielle shared that skill, and conversation flowed easily between them as they meandered for a while through the woods.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Arielle finally asked, after twenty or so minutes.

"Um."

"You and Eliot gave each other _significant looks_ when you asked me to come out on a walk with you."

"Well."

"Is it something bad?" Arielle said. Her tone was still light and unconcerned, but there was the smallest pucker of worry between her eyebrows. Without thinking about it, Quentin reached up and thumbed away the lines, the way he and Eliot did to each other all the time. Arielle's eyebrows shot up. "Okay, you have to tell me."

Quentin took a deep breath, and, despite remembering Eliot's advice (_romance her a little_), decided that being straight-forward about this was the best way not to make a total fool of himself. "Ari, Eliot and I were wondering - we were wondering if you might want to..." he coughed. He couldn't say it. Eliot had been right, they couldn't possibly go through with this if Quentin couldn't even _talk_ about it -

Arielle placed a hand on his arm, gentle, and when Quentin looked up to meet her eyes, she leaned forward and placed a soft kiss right on the corner of his mouth.

Quentin froze, and Arielle pulled away, her eyes shining for a moment before she noticed Quentin's somewhat shell-shocked expression. Then she balked, taking a hasty step away from him. "Oh no. Was I wrong? Because if so - "

"No!" Quentin said. "No, you weren't wrong."

Arielle heaved out a dramatic sigh of relief and put a hand over her heart. "Oh, good. I thought maybe you were asking me - but then if you _weren't_ how humiliating is that, right?" She'd gone bright pink, which was something that happened to her often. She wasn't a particularly bashful person, but she blushed at the drop of a hat anyway. Quentin had a sudden vision of her flushed and red for an entirely different reason, and for the first time, the academic possibility of being in bed with her sharpened to an immediate want.

"So - I take it that's a yes, then," he said, coughing to clear his throat.

"With you and Eliot both, right?" Arielle said bluntly.

"Yeah, that's - the idea," Quentin said. "El said I wasn't supposed to make this seem like a business transaction. We both really care about you and we don't want it to seem like..."

"Well, despite Eliot's advice, I'd actually be more comfortable if we _did_ treat it a bit like a transaction. At least right now - lay out some ground rules, you know?" They'd stopped walking to have this conversation but at this point Arielle hooked her arm into his and started steering them around the loop that would lead back to the cottage. "Like, what exactly are you proposing?"

"Well, sex," Quentin said.

"And nothing else," Arielle said. "I mean, other than friendship, of course."

"Ari, if that's weird for you, or - hurtful, then obviously we can just forget the whole thing."

"Oh, please," Arielle said, waving an airy hand in front of her as they strolled. "I like you and Eliot both a lot, but I'm not a blushing schoolgirl. I promise I won't fall madly in love with either one of you once I've seen you naked."

Quentin laughed, and cursed how nervous the sound was. "Okay, fair enough. I didn't mean to imply that you would. It's just that - it feels kind of crass, I guess, to ask my good friend if she wants to have sex with me and my boyfriend just because we think it would be hot."

"I've decided to be flattered and not scandalized," Arielle assured him, squeezing his arm tighter to her. "And Eliot talks about how good you are with your mouth. Are you comfortable working with - ah - different equipment?"

Quentin, who got flustered easily but generally _didn't_ blush, felt his face grow warm. "Um. Um. Would you like that?"

Arielle leaned sideways into him for a moment, giggling. "Honestly, yeah. Is that okay to say?"

"It's - um. Okay. More than okay," Quentin said, strained. He'd dreaded this conversation to such a degree that it hadn't occurred to him it might be _sexy_ to talk about sex with Arielle. And then something hit him - "Wait, Eliot talks about - he tells you about our sex life?"

"Only once - he was really tipsy and he asked me what Lunk was like in bed, and then we were - swapping stories, I guess you could say."

"So, I've also decided to be flattered, and not humiliated," Quentin said, his skin thrumming from a potent combination of the two emotions. Truth be told, it was exciting to think of Eliot waxing poetic about his skills in bed, especially to Arielle.

They walked on for a while longer, Arielle asking refreshingly straight-forward questions about what specifically Eliot and Quentin had talked about doing with her, while Quentin got warmer and warmer and started to appreciate the lines of Arielle's body walking so near to his in an especially tantalizing sort of way.

As they got nearer to the cottage, Quentin stopped her, turning her to face him. "Um." He said. Why the hell was that always his opening line when he kissed someone? He really had to try to be smoother about this kind of thing. "Um," he repeated, like an idiot, and then leaned forward to kiss Arielle squarely on the mouth.

She kissed him back, soft and warm, and she tasted of sugary peaches.

* * *

**ELIOT**

Eliot didn't need to ask Quentin and Arielle how their walk had went. It was pretty obvious, from the way they came ducking under the clothes line, giggling and _juggling_ (Quentin was such a nerd, that was probably how he tried to woo women), and then kissing one another, soft and sure and affectionate.

Eliot, who had woke up from a brief nap on the middle of the mosaic and was now regretting it because of a kink in his neck, smiled at the sight. They looked cute together, like some sort of platonic ideal of fresh-faced innocent romance. But they weren't that - Quentin was a screamer in bed and Eliot knew for a fact that this wasn't going to be Arielle's first time with more than one partner. He hopped up off the mosaic as they came closer, smiling at them both.

"You trying to steal my man, Miss Ashmore?" he said, mock glaring at Arielle.

She shrugged at him. "I thought I might borrow him, if you don't mind." And then she tilted her face up at him, and Eliot leaned down to kiss her, just a small peck. Quentin let in a sharp intake of breath next to them and Eliot turned to him, smiling evilly.

"That doing it for you, little Q?" he asked, leaning forward to kiss him, deeper and wetter and longer. Quentin hummed against his mouth.

"Well _that's_ doing it for _me_," Arielle declared. Then she laughed. "Eliot, did you get any work done at all while we were gone?" She was looking at the mosaic behind them, which may have looked pretty much the same as it had when they'd left for their walk. So sue him. It was a warm, drowsy sort of day, just at the cusp of Autumn, and the sun had felt too nice against his skin, the day too still and lazy, for him to bully himself into working.

Quentin broke the kiss to look behind Eliot as well, and sighed, exasperated. Then he brought his hands up to the back of Eliot's neck and squeezed, working at the muscles there. "You've got to stop sleeping out here, El, you're going to give yourself some sort of spinal deformity."

"That's not a sexy thing to say, Quentin, we're trying to establish a _vibe_," Eliot said, while pleasure and love bloomed inside of him at the sure and automatic way Quentin had started to take care of him without even being asked.

"You can pull back on the vibe-setting," Arielle said regretfully. "I actually have to finish my rounds now. Maybe we can plan to um - "

"Fuck each other," Eliot supplied, and Arielle went red.

"Yes, that. The next time I'm coming through? Early next week."

"There's nothing more romantic than scheduling sex," Eliot said, reaching forward and petting his hand against the side of Arielle's pretty face. Then, without looking away from her - "Q, would you be a darling and mark it down on the calendar?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear what you think.


	4. Chapter Four - In Which Something Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about content... let's think fondly back to the me of a couple of months ago who was blushingly writing her very first sex scene, and then read this chapter and laugh at how stupidly easy it was to become someone whose smut-to-plot ratio is rapidly reaching a 50/50 split. This story has a plot, I promise. I hope you enjoy!

**QUENTIN**

"So, um," Quentin said, darting a look between Eliot and Arielle uncertainly. The three of them were in the cottage, standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed. Arielle was fidgety and blushing, but Eliot was as still as a statue - the look on his face could almost have been described as disinterested, but Quentin knew him well enough to know that his stillness and passivity was his own way of expressing nerves. Somehow, knowing that Eliot was also a little unclear on how to proceed, made him feel just a touch less anxious.

It turned out that there was a weird intermediary stage between agreeing verbally to have a threesome, and then actually _having_ the threesome. And that intermediary stage involved things like awkward small-talk around the table in the cottage's minuscule kitchen, with the bed just like - _looming_ behind them in the corner of the room while all three of them pretended not to be looking at it.

And then finally, after the third or fourth stalled conversation starter, Eliot had sighed, rolled his eyes, and stood up from the table, holding both of his hands out towards Arielle and Quentin. They had taken his hands immediately, and Quentin shot Arielle a quick smile and knew they were thinking the same thing - _thank the gods that Eliot had control issues. _And now they were by the bed, and the awkwardness had started to creep back in again, but this time it was Arielle who was brave enough to lead them onward.

"I was thinking about this," she said, her voice pitched low like she was telling a secret. "And I think, if it's alright with the two of you - um."

"What do you want?" Eliot asked. "Tell us."

"I was thinking to start that maybe I could watch the two of you. Just - until we're all a little more relaxed."

Quentin's stomach flipped. He wouldn't have expected the idea of it to be hot, but it was. When he'd been picturing this night, he'd thought that he and Eliot would both be focused on Arielle, bringing her pleasure - but the thought that they could do that by focusing on each other instead wasn't something he'd imagined.

"Q?" Eliot asked.

"Yeah," he said, nodding a bit dumbly. "Yeah, I think that sounds good."

And Eliot, perfect, charming, confident Eliot, took the lead the way Quentin needed him to. He turned to him, cupped a hand along his jaw, and drew him into a kiss.

This part was simple - this part was his life. The joy and intimacy and lovely, aching softness of Eliot's lips against his, the heat of his breath, the pressure of his tongue teasing along the seam of his lips. He knew how to do this, knew what Eliot liked and what _he_ liked. Before long, they were sitting on the edge of the bed, making out like teenagers. Making out like they had an audience, which - yeah. Yep, apparently Quentin was a little bit into that.

Eliot moaned into his mouth, and Quentin moaned back - it wasn't performative, but it also _was_ \- they were moving together, trying to make each other feel good, and also trying to make someone _else_ feel good all at the same time.

Quentin heard a rustle of fabric and disconnected his lips from Eliot to see Arielle move to sit next to him. She reached up a curious hand and brushed it through Quentin's hair, which he'd left flowing loose. "Is it okay if I touch you?" Arielle asked.

"We wouldn't have invited you here if that's not what we wanted," Eliot said, his voice a little rough from the kiss. "Kiss him."

It was almost, not quite, a command, and Arielle obeyed it, leaning in to capture Quentin's lips with her own. It was less sweet, more - _messy_ \- than the few kisses they had shared last week, and it made Quentin's heart skip a beat in his chest. He nearly jumped when he felt Eliot's hand on his thigh, rubbing up and down while Arielle kissed him with confidence and skill.

"Is she a good kisser?" Eliot asked, right against the shell of Quentin's ear. Quentin shivered, breaking the kiss and tilting his head back into Eliot's face.

"Yeah. You should - if you want - "

Arielle leaned over Quentin, placing one of _her_ hands on his other thigh, and Eliot brought his lips down to kiss her. Slow, wet, dirty, each of them leaning right in front of Quentin's body to reach each other. "Jesus," Quentin said, stunned. His brain shorted out, all of his thoughts running haywire. He wanted everything, all at once, and he made himself take a couple of deep breaths, willing Eliot, or Arielle, or _both_, to move their hands up higher, to feel him getting hard just from this. Eliot pulled away from the kiss with a wet sound, and then did exactly what Quentin wanted, sliding his hand up and rubbing him through his pants, humming in appreciation at what he found.

"She _is_ good," Eliot agreed, licking once at the seam of Quentin's lip, playful. "Can we undress you?"

Time was behaving strangely, moving in fits and starts as Arielle and Eliot worked in tandem to strip him out of his clothing. It should have felt off-putting to be laid out on the bed naked like that when they were both fully clothed, but, again, Quentin was finding himself helplessly aroused just by being watched.

"I want to see you both," Quentin said, when he was stripped bare, his cock jutting up hard against his stomach. "I need - "

Eliot whipped his shirt off over his head with one firm tug, and, pulled his pants down, undressing in an efficient, un-showy sort of way that nevertheless made Quentin hot all over. Then he laid down on his side next to Quentin, one arm thrown across his torso, his hand brushing up and down his arm. He dusted kisses along Quentin's shoulder, and Quentin sighed, turning his head so their lips could meet again. Slow, searching.

"You're beautiful," Arielle said after awhile, and when Quentin looked up at her, he saw that she'd stepped out of her dress and was left in just her shift. He could see her nipples hard underneath the thin fabric.

"Come here," Quentin heard himself say, from somewhere outside his own body. She approached the bed and he sat up, leaving Eliot lying on his side. He bracketed his hands on her waist, and then kissed her on the stomach, through her clothing. He half stood from the bed in order to reach her, ducking his head and kissing cautiously along the swell of one of her breasts, still with the layer of cloth separating them.

Arielle gasped, soft, and then she stepped back just slightly from him, pulling the shift off and leaving herself naked too. For a moment Quentin and Arielle just stared at each other, and then Quentin tugged her gently down so she was sitting beside him on the bed. He kissed her again, and she moaned into it, deepening instantly and pressing forward so that her naked torso was aligned with his. Kissing her felt so good, in a way that Quentin didn't quite know how to describe. It was different, both physically and emotionally, from kissing Eliot, of course. But there was the sharp excitement of newness, the softness of the body pressed against him. And there was also the fact that he knew Eliot was watching him and -

A low groan sounded from behind him, and he eased back from the kiss, looking back over his shoulders to see Eliot stroking himself to full hardness, propped up on his other elbow as he watched the two of them, eyes dark and unblinking.

Arielle gave another little gasp and slid herself up further on the bed, closer to Eliot. She reached a hand out, most of her self-consciousness apparently vanished, and placed a hand square over Eliot's chest for a moment. Then she moved one of her hands over and rolled one of his nipples in her fingers. Eliot gave a sharp gasp and arched his back up, his fist tightening on his cock. "Can I touch you?" Arielle asked, as Quentin, his brain fuzzy with everything going on in front of him, slid around to Eliot's other side, ducking down to kiss and lick at Eliot's neck, exactly where he knew he liked to be touched.

Eliot moaned again and rolled his head towards Quentin, into the pressure of his lips. "Isn't that what you're - _ungh_ \- what you're doing?" he asked Arielle, in answer to her question, and then - "Oh, God." Quentin's head popped up - he wanted to see. Arielle had trailed her hand lower and had gently removed Eliot's own hand from his erection, replacing it with hers, setting the same steady, slow rhythm.

"You're so big," Arielle said, her eyes alight.

And something in the room shifted - Quentin actually let out a laugh, burying his face in Eliot's shoulder for a moment. "God, don't tell him that, Ari, he's got enough problems with his ego as it is." Eliot laughed in a breathy sort of way and Arielle smiled at Quentin, never faltering the rhythm of her hand.

Their laughter broke some of the slow, timid tension between them. It suddenly felt very easy to talk and plan and arrange what each of them wanted from the others, how best to make this work, which combinations would be the most fun for all.

Arielle watched for a while as Eliot pinned Quentin to the bed and kissed him, rutting against him, each of them groaning into each other's mouths while Arielle touched herself. Then, Arielle took her own turn kissing Quentin while Eliot sucked his cock, keeping the pace slow, stopping before Quentin could get too worked up to turn back. Quentin spent a few moments suckling Arielle's breasts while Eliot ran his hands over both of them, just touching their legs, their backs, fiddling his hands in their hair.

It was fun and exciting, coming up with new ways to try, purposefully taking things slow and feeling out what felt best. After a while, Arielle, with remarkable boldness, said she was ready to come, and Quentin decided it was time to show off.

She arranged herself so her head was back on one of the pillows, spread out pale and naked and beautiful for them against the sheets. Eliot stayed up near the head of the bed at first, and Quentin settled himself between her legs.

It had been a long time since Quentin had done this, but muscle memory was his friend, and after all of the foreplay they'd just gone through, he knew a bit about Arielle's body - the sounds she made, the way she moved. He spent some time kissing the insides of her thighs, until she was trembling in anticipation, and then he got to work.

Eliot took to his own natural role with ease, instructing them both, keeping up a steady stream of praise. After a minute or so, he told Arielle to put her hands in Quentin's hair, and when she did, pulling just a little, and Quentin moaned against her, Arielle let out a breathy laugh, squirming around until Quentin got a hand up and pinned her stomach to the bed to stop her moving.

Things moved slow and languorous and beautiful for a while, Arielle's body trembling, her feet, resting against his waist, twitching occasionally whenever he sucked harder directly against her clit. Quentin could hear Eliot's breathing going uneven as he watched them, and heard the slick sound of Eliot's lubed hand on his own cock again. He wanted Eliot in his mouth, too, he always fucking wanted that, but this was good - this was _so_ good, knowing that this was turning Eliot on - Quentin himself was so hard that he wanted to rub himself against the mattress underneath him, but he resisted, knowing better things were yet to come.

"You're doing so good, Q," Eliot's voice sounded suddenly, low against his ear. He'd shifted down the bed so he could curl up next to him, his cock pressed hard into Quentin's hip. "You're making me crazy. God, I want - I want to lick you open, get you ready for my cock - "

Quentin groaned, imagining it, and Arielle squirmed and gasped at the vibrations, a feedback loop that was making him light-headed.

"But if I did that," Eliot continued, breathless, and Quentin felt Eliot's fingers, slick with lube, sliding into his crack, "I couldn't watch you. I want to watch you make her come, Q, while I open you up on on my fingers - "

Another moan, Quentin and Arielle both together. "Yeah, like that," Arielle said suddenly, her voice high and breathy. "Oh, you're perfect, you're so good at this - "

"He's got a praise kink," Eliot informed Arielle gleefully, now circling a finger over Quentin's opening without pressing inside. Quentin wanted to lift his head and tell him to stop being such a fucking tease and _get inside him_, but that would have meant stopping what he was doing long enough to speak, and he could tell that Arielle was close.

Quentin hadn't lied to Eliot when he'd once described himself as mediocre in bed, but _this_ was one thing he knew he was good at. And he loved it, bringing people off with his mouth, his lips and tongue steady and sure and skilled. The confidence boost he got when Eliot lost himself and spilled into the heat of Quentin's mouth was like nothing else he'd ever experienced. And this was - this was _different_, the shape of the pleasure it brought him wasn't the same, but it was still _good_, and _empowering_, to know he was making a beautiful woman whimper and twitch under his ministrations.

Eliot finally quit fucking around and pressed a finger inside of him, and Quentin jerked suddenly, rubbing his cock against the mattress in an unconscious need for friction. By this point, Arielle was moaning continually, little staccato sounds - _Ah, Ah, Ah - _as she lifted her hips and pushed up into his mouth. Eliot pressed a second finger inside of him, his aim unerring and perfect, and oh _god_. Quentin forced himself to stop thrusting down into the bed. He felt feverish, right on the edge of coming.

"C'mon, Q, you're gonna make her come, you're doing so well, she's right there - "

"Eliot," Arielle groaned. "Eliot, kiss me - "

Quentin's skin was tingling - he looked up as best as he could while keeping the motion of his tongue steady, in time to see Eliot bend over the top of him to press his lips against Arielle - he was keeping it chaste, but Ari didn't want that, grabbing at his face with her hands and pressing his jaw open, curling their tongues together. Eliot made a surprised but pleased moan into her mouth, his fingers still pistoning inside of Quentin. Arielle groaned low right against his lips, and then her hips jerked hard against Quentin's mouth a couple of times, and her thighs started to quiver and -

"_Ungh, fuck - yesyesyes - _"

Quentin licked her through her orgasm, and Eliot kissed her, dirty and thorough, pulling out every trick that always made Quentin's toes curl and his heart stutter in his chest.

The second Arielle had gone limp and still on the bed, Quentin sat up and reached for Eliot, who tore his lips away from hers and practically lunged at him, licking and kissing Ari's juices off of his face. "Oh, fuck," Eliot said, sloppy and messy directly into his mouth. "Oh, fuck, I'm so fucking hard right now, that was so goddamn hot, Q, you did so good, baby - "

Eliot was babbling the way he only did when he was truly losing his mind, but Quentin was too desperate himself to fully appreciate it. He groaned, wordless, and pushed Eliot backwards so he could climb onto his lap, rubbing their cocks together. He was frantic, shoving forward so his cock rubbed against Eliot's stomach, while Eliot gasped and groaned into his mouth. For a while they were both wild with it, kissing and grasping and jerking forward into each other, but then Eliot got a hand around the back of his neck, and slowed them down, bracketing his other hand on Quentin's waist and shifting their kiss to something slower, if no less passionate. "I want to be inside you now," he told Quentin, his voice shaking.

"I want you there," Quentin said, and he lifted up, reaching behind him to guide himself down on Eliot's cock.

And once Eliot was inside of him, nothing else in the world mattered. They were pressed so close together, moving and shifting in that molasses-slow way that meant that neither of them wanted it to ever end. Eliot was cradling Quentin's face in between his hands and kept stroking his thumbs along his cheekbones, his eyes darting all over his face like he was hypnotized. He followed the motion of his thumbs with his lips - light, nearly chaste brushes against his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids, his mouth, that complimented the slow, relentless pressure deep inside of him.

"El," he croaked, pressing their foreheads together. "_God_."

"Yeah," Eliot said, nuzzling forward, sliding their lips against one another. "So good. You're so - _good_ for me, baby."

There was a small sharp gasp and Quentin, who hadn't _forgotten_ Arielle, exactly, but who had certainly been focused on other things, turned to see her lounging back against the pillows, one of her fingers moving in slow circles around her clit. It was beautiful, and the feel of Eliot inside of him was beautiful, and the combination shorted out his brain for like the dozenth time that night.

"Arielle," Eliot said, his voice warm and low. "Ari, what can we do for - "

She shook her head, breathing in sharp little gasps, her fingers wet with moisture as she dipped and slid them against herself. "Just keep going - keep - keep fucking him, Eliot. You two are so - "

Quentin moaned, loud and shameless, and Eliot thrust up sharply into him. "Q," Eliot murmured against his neck. "Look at her. Look at her, getting off to me making love to you - "

"Fuck," Quentin said, sucker-punched. "_Fuck_. Harder."

For a while after that Quentin could only breathe, harsh and desperate, and accept Eliot's biting and licking kisses against his mouth, the hard, accurate thrusts of his cock inside of him. It felt so good, so overwhelming and right and true to be filled like this, to have the love of his life crushed against him, in him, as close as he could possibly be and still never close enough. Like an erotic soundtrack to the sensations rolling through and over him, he could hear Arielle's breathing going sharper and sharper, and the wet sounds of her fingers slipping against herself.

"Ari, come here," Eliot said, without moving his eyes or his mouth away from Q. Quentin squeezed his eyes shut, suddenly aware that he was seconds away from coming, but Eliot was unclenching one of his hands from the tangle of Quentin's hair and bringing it down, as Arielle moved herself closer to them on the bed, and then -

"_Ah_, yes, Eliot, _don't stop._"

Quentin's eyes popped open and he looked down, watching Eliot's fingers replacing Arielle's, his heel pressed against the top of her mound and two of his fingers sliding inside of her. She was biting her lip, her head thrown back; one of her hands had come up to pinch and pull at one of her own nipples as she ground herself up into Eliot's hand, a constant stream of pleading and gasping falling from her mouth -

Quentin's orgasm ripped out of him with no warning - he clamped down against the hard, unceasing motion of Eliot inside of him, without so much as a hand on himself, and heard Arielle's cries change pitch and grow hoarse as she came for the second time that night. He was losing his mind, everything was unraveling - and then he heard Eliot's voice, pressed directly into the skin of his neck, while the jolts of pleasure were still cresting through him - "Fuck, I'm gonna - I'm gonna come inside you, Q, so hot, you're so fucking good -" Eliot's teeth clamped down almost too hard onto his shoulder and then he was coming, spurting deep inside of Quentin, jerking wildly up into him and crying out low, needy moans into his sweaty skin.

Quentin slumped entirely forward in Eliot's lap, leaning all of his weight into him, and after a moment Eliot tilted, dumping him (mostly) gently onto the bed on his back as he slid out, still breathing hard. Quentin could barely keep his eyes open, but he felt it when Eliot did the clean-up tuts and then collapsed down onto his stomach, his face smashed into Quentin's shoulder, their legs twining against each other.

"Wow," Arielle said, dreamy, after a few moments of silence. Eliot huffed laughter into Quentin's shoulder and threw his right arm out blindly, landing it across Arielle's waist and encouraging her to scoot closer to his other side. Quentin heard this more than saw it - his eyes were open now, but there were little spots of color in front of his vision and he couldn't make the room come into focus.

"I think I blacked out," Eliot said after a moment. "_God_, that was - "

"Yeah," Quentin croaked. "Jesus."

"Thank you," Arielle said, and then giggled nervously. "I mean - well, you know. Thank you."

"Pleasure was all ours," Eliot slurred right against Quentin's skin. "You can stay if you want, Ari. I'm trying not to be rude but honestly I'm already mostly unconscious."

She laughed again, then yawned. Quentin heard the rustle of her skin against the sheets as she stretched, letting out a thoroughly satisfied moan as she did so. Quentin's stomach tried to flip over but it was too tired. They fell asleep like that, Eliot clutching Quentin to him with Arielle pressed shoulder-to-hip against his back.

* * *

**ELIOT**

Things were remarkably not awkward at all the next morning - they had breakfast, and Arielle offered each of them a sweet, simple kiss before she headed out to head back home. Quentin and Eliot completed their morning routine on auto-pilot, heading out to the mosaic to finish up the pattern they had been working on the day before, until Arielle had arrived.

They were both giddy, high-energy, and flushed with success, and Eliot was finding himself even more impatient than usual to be done with the pattern, so he could get back to more important things. It was still mid-morning when they completed last night's pattern, and the second that it failed as usual, Eliot was yanking Quentin forward and kissing him. "Damn, Q," he said when he pulled away.

"You just kissed _me_, I think that's supposed to be _my_ line," Quentin said. He looked so goddamn cute, with his nose all scrunched up and his eyes bright and affectionate. How was this Eliot's life? How had he managed to achieve this?

"You're incredible," Eliot said, brushing their noses together. "Do you know that?"

"If I don't, it's not for your lack of trying," Quentin said, closing the distance to peck him once on the lips, before pulling away slightly, and looking up at him. "I think last night went pretty well."

Eliot laughed at the understatement. There was something mixed in with his pleasure and satisfaction - a sense of relief that it _had_ gone well. He'd had a good idea about their compatibility, but these things were never certain, and he would have hated himself if he'd brought any strain in to their relationship with Arielle. Having friends here in Fillory was the most important part of their mission to build a life for themselves here. They needed Ari, and her family, and all of the other people they'd met in this community, to ground them and keep them sane against the backdrop of the mosaic's never-ending drudgery.

"I think it's safe to say that last night went _extremely_ well, for all parties involved."

"Ari seemed to have fun," Quentin said, his customary insecurity turning the statement into almost a question.

"Fun? You made her fucking breathless, Q. You were a sexual _savant_ in there."

"And what about you?" Quentin asked, looking at him in curiosity.

"Honey. Sweetheart. Light of my life," Eliot said, letting a touch of laughter color his tone. "You make _me_ breathless just by walking into a room."

Quentin rolled his eyes at him, but ruined the effect by grinning broadly and tilting his head up for another kiss, which Eliot gladly gave him. "Mmm," Quentin hummed into it, before pulling away. He ran his hands up Eliot's arms and carded them through his curls, looking up into his eyes. "Well, _obviously_. I'm irresistible. I meant - did you have a good time? With Ari?"

"I did," Eliot said immediately. "A really good time. You both looked so beautiful."

Quentin smiled, clearly pleased, and then leaned up to bite Eliot's bottom lip, tugging it for a moment between his teeth before releasing it. "We could do it again sometime, if we all wanted."

"Fuck yes, I want," Eliot said immediately.

"But not too often," Quentin said. "I like having you all to myself."

Eliot sighed as if this was an upsetting caveat, while his heart did a tap-dance inside of his chest. "Oh, Q. I know your possessive nature should be a red flag for me, but honestly I find it charming."

"Possessive,my _ass_," Quentin muttered, clearly trying not to smile.

"Possessive _of_ your ass, certainly," Eliot said, smacking one cheek and then grabbing said ass in both hands. "This belongs to me."

The teasing light in Quentin's eyes flickered out and his pupils went dark. "Okay so that probably shouldn't turn me on but it really, really does."

"Oh, Jesus. Noted," Eliot said, squeezing Quentin again and bringing their hips flush together. "You're a walking wet dream, Coldwater, you have no _idea_."

"Then you'll have to show me," Quentin said, breathless, and he slid himself up onto his toes to reach Eliot's mouth again.

* * *

The next time Arielle came through, there was an added texture to their friendly and brief visit. She'd already been a good friend, but after sharing such an intimate and, honestly, _fun_, experience with her, she was starting to feel even closer. She would never fit in the same space in Eliot's life that Margo had, but there was something similar about it, in all honesty - a woman he wanted to make happy, wanted to be around, wanted to love, outside the bounds of conventional attraction and romance. And, as strange as it was to contemplate, he was pretty sure that Quentin felt the exact same way about her.

Quentin was inside preparing lunch for them while Eliot finished undoing their latest pattern, to get ready for another pass. Arielle helped out in silence for a while, taking stacks of tiles as Eliot passed them off of the mosaic frame. That was another great thing about Ari - she was comfortable to be around, even in silence.

But, eventually, she did break it -

"Can I ask you a question?" She was kneeling right on the outside of the mosaic, her dress draped against her thighs and her feet underneath her. "Why did you - I mean, why did you and Quentin ask me to join you?"

"We told you," Eliot said easily, scooting a stack of tiles towards the outside of the square, moving them with quick, automatic movements into place. "We both like you and we though it would be fun."

"Yeah, but - I mean, it's not like the two of you needed anything to spice up your sex life." Arielle paused, and Eliot looked up just in time to see her biting her lip in hesitation. "Unless all of the moaning and hysterical panting was a performance for _my_ benefit, that is."

"I do not _pant hysterically_."

"Quentin certainly does," Arielle shot back.

Eliot laughed. "Okay, fair enough. And yeah, you're right, we do just fine on our own."

"So then - "

"It's not about _need. _It's just - I don't know. I don't want to sound callous or make out like it didn't mean anything, but it's really not that deep. I thought it would be hot. Q agreed. So we asked you."

"But you two together are - I mean, when you were inside of him, the way you looked at each other, I could have disappeared into a puff of smoke and neither of you would have noticed."

Eliot frowned at that, his hands stilling on the tiles as he turned to study her face. "Are you - you said you had a good time, but if we - I mean, if we weren't good to you - "

"Oh, no, that's not what I meant," Arielle rushed to explain. "Trust me, I loved it. Quentin's got an incredibly talented mouth, and your _hands_ \- um." She cut off, blushing scarlet, and Eliot grinned.

"My hands, huh?"

"Oh, like that's a surprise to you," Arielle said.

"Not even a little bit, but it's still nice to hear."

"My point is," Arielle said, granting him an indulgent eye-roll, "I had a good time. I don't regret it in the slightest. I guess I was just... curious. You guys aren't looking for an open relationship or anything. You're not trying to fix a problem or... or fill a void by bringing someone else in. You just - felt like mixing things up?"

"Yep. Sorry it's not more interesting than that," Eliot said. He wondered if he should be annoyed with her for questioning his motives like that, especially since they'd been upfront and clear with her before anything had happened. But her questions didn't really bother him. He could tell from the look on her face that this was more about her sorting out her own internal expectations with regards to sex and relationships. She'd had casual sex before, Eliot knew, but evidently she'd been bad at negotiating the lines sometimes.

"And we'd love to do it again," Eliot added. "If you're game. Whenever we all feel in the mood for it."

"Oh," Arielle said, blushing again. She blushed so _much_. It couldn't be easy to have your emotions written all over your face like that, without any way of controlling it. "Oh, yes, that would be nice."

"Just don't go falling in love with me, Ari," Eliot said, pointing a finger at her in mock seriousness. "I'm taken, and Quentin doesn't play nice." 

* * *

Days blurred into weeks blurred into months. They tried and failed at the mosaic, the comforting familiarity of exactly _nothing happening_ filling their waking hours each time they completed another pattern. They went into town and spent evenings with their friends. They went swimming in the river. They babysat for Arielle's nieces and nephews. They tried to solve the mosaic some more. They got into petty arguments and then fucked each other silly to break the tension. They _failed _to solve the mosaic some more. Occasionally, Ari came around with a certain look on her face and they abandoned the mosaic for an entire afternoon, competing with each other over who could give her the most orgasms. They went on long walks through the nearby woods, stopped for afternoon tea with Ostrich the Bear, who preferred the Fillorian version of Oolong, over all other varieties. They visited the farm and ate Mrs. Ashmore's cooking until they were stuffed to bursting. Quentin used his magic to mend broken farming equipment and then refused proper payment for his efforts. And then they fought about that, and had more sex to celebrate the end of the argument. And then they kept not solving the mosaic some more, just for good measure.

And before Eliot could really process it -

"Three years," Quentin said in wonder. "Next week, we'll have been here for _three years_."

"That's longer than I had with Margo in my life before coming here," Eliot mused. It still hurt like a motherfucker to think about her sometimes, but Quentin had been right - talking about it made it easier to keep the feelings manageable.

"And it means we've been together two years," Quentin said, petting a hand through Eliot's hair in an unconscious soothing gesture. There was nothing he could say in response to the observation about Margo, and he knew it, so he didn't try. Eliot fucking loved him so much. "That's longer than any relationship I've ever had."

"Well, me too. But you know that," Eliot said.

"Should we do something to celebrate?"

"I could make you a candlelit dinner," Eliot said. He'd meant it to come out as a joke but it didn't, and it _wasn't_, not really. He never would have expected it of himself in the beginning, but he really liked doing things for Q - romantic, cliche, silly things. It was like an extension of his party-planning days back at Brakebills and in Whitespire. Instead of focusing his creative energies on giant events, he focused instead on making Quentin get that look in his eyes, that soft, romantic look that usually led to blowjobs. Not that that was why he was doing it, exactly, but it was certainly a nice perk.

They had a quiet, peaceful anniversary, and Eliot, who had never really understood why commitment to the same person for years on end should be cause for celebration, found himself completely taken by the whole concept. He waxed poetic at Quentin all day about how perfect and lovely he was, doted on him and was doted on in return. And they had a lot of really good sex. The sex was always good, obviously, but this time it was _celebratory_ sex, which made it extra exciting. Quentin had let Eliot tie him up again, and then later Eliot had laid on his stomach on the bed while Quentin gave him a full body massage and then fucked him so slow it put him in a hazy state somewhere between waking and sleeping, the two of them rolling gently through the waves of sensation for what felt like hours.

But maybe the best part of the day itself (or at least a close second) was that they gave themselves the whole day off from the mosaic.

Eliot was still high on the endorphins of their anniversary when Arielle next came by on her rounds a few days later. She was carrying her basket of fruit as usual, her modest dress swishing against early fall leaves as she approached the two of them, back at work on another pattern. Quentin was up in the ladder to direct Eliot, but he climbed down to greet her, both of them offering Ari brief kisses on the cheek.

After a few minutes, and the usual questions asking after her family, it became clear to Eliot that something was wrong. He glanced at Quentin, and saw him looking back, his eyebrows raised - he'd noticed it too.

"Everything alright, Ari?" Quentin asked, plucking a peach out of the basket in a pointed sort of way. She'd failed to throw them each a piece of fruit, which was her normal custom when she came calling.

"Oh," she said, staring with a frown at the fruit in Quentin's hand, as if she was trying to figure out what it was. "Oh, yes. Everything's alright. I just need to discuss something." She paused, swung her eyes back and forth between Quentin and Eliot, and bit her lip. "With both of you."

"Should we sit down?" Eliot asked. His slight concern was morphing into true anxiety. Arielle didn't look devastated or scared, exactly, but there was something deeply unsettling about the way her mouth was twisted up, the slightly downcast motion of her eyes.

So they did, sitting on either side of her on the bench, waiting in silence for her to get her bearings and speak. "I want you to know, first thing, that - um. This doesn't have to be your - I mean to say, it's completely up to you if you want anything to do with this."

"Okay," Quentin said, to fill the silence that followed.

"Um. But I think I know you pretty well by now and I have a feeling you'll probably want to be involved. Again, no pressure, obviously."

"Ari," Eliot said, a faint hint of impatience in his tone. "Darling. Why don't you just say it, and then we can decide how we feel about - whatever it is you're talking about?"

Arielle took a couple of deep breaths, staring down at her toes. Then she turned and leveled Eliot with a long, serious look, one Eliot was at a loss to interpret. She looked away, swinging that same intense glance over to Quentin. She was looking right at him, brave and bold, when she said it.

"I'm pregnant."

..._  
_

_I_ _'m pregnant._

Pregnant.

_Pregnant_?

What the ever loving fuck.

It's true what they say, apparently. Sometimes, a single moment can actually change everything. Eliot had had several such moments in his life. He killed someone, and discovered he had magic all at once. He learned about Brakebills. He met Margo Hanson. His hand started to bleed and he was a High King. Quentin kissed him. Arielle was _pregnant_.

For several moments nobody spoke. Eliot's brain stopped thinking thoughts, and then when it _started_ again, the variety of emotions pinging through him were too complicated to put a name to.

"Ari," Quentin said, his voice choked. "You're - and it's - "

"It's yours," Arielle said firmly. Her hands were pressed against her flat stomach like she needed to remind herself of what they were talking about. "Well, probability says it's yours," she amended, nodding a head towards Quentin. "Although it's technically not impossible that it could be _yours_," she said, tilting her head towards Eliot.

A few dozen more emotions crowded their way immediately into Eliot's pounding temples. "Unlikely but possible," he admitted. Things got messy sometimes when the three of them got going. "Holy fuck, Ari."

"I wanted to talk with you guys so we could make a joint decision about what to do," Arielle said. Her voice was wavering slightly, but she sounded remotely level-headed. Eliot wanted a drink so badly that he decided it would probably be a terrible idea to have one. Quentin's hand was bunching up the sleeve of his shirt, twisting the fabric through his fingers in a completely unconscious, fidgety manner. Eliot kind of wanted to grab Quentin and pull him all the way into his arms, use him like a security blanket, but he resisted, keeping his gaze firmly on Arielle.

Arielle, the mother of Quentin's baby.

Apparently.

Fuck.

"Whatever you want to do," Quentin said, and his voice sounded very far away, "we support you."

"I've decided I'm having the baby," Arielle said at once, clearly understanding Quentin's subtext faster than Eliot's brain could keep up. "Not that there's anything wrong with - "

Quentin was shaking his head, his eyes bright. "Like I said, Ari, whatever you want. Whatever you want, but I - I hope you know that we want to be involved, like - "

Eliot grabbed one of Quentin's hands, which was waving around in the air wildly, and squeezed it hard. Quentin had just spoken for him, but he didn't mind at all. "Yes. Of course we want to be involved. You should move here, Ari. You and the baby."

Arielle was looking between the two of them, her lip twisted uncertainly. "You - listen, thank you, but if the two of you need a moment to discuss it - "

"We don't," they said together.

Eliot was going to have a panic attack about this later, he could already tell. But for the moment, it seemed clear and obvious and right. Arielle was their best friend. They loved her. She was having Quentin's baby. And Eliot -

Eliot was going to be a father.


	5. Chapter Five - In Which a Family Grows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the first chapter I worked on where I fully knew what story I was writing. The characters started doing and saying things that went totally against what I had outlined. They felt differently about what was happening than I had expected them to, and I just went with it, writing it out, until the shape of this chapter, and of a lot of the subsequent story, had shifted into its current form. I love it when that happens to me when I'm writing - it's rare, but always such a treat!
> 
> It also means that yeah, there's a bit of angst here - but happiness still abounds, I promise!

**QUENTIN**

"Okay, you're being suspiciously calm," Quentin said to Eliot. Arielle had left a couple of hours ago to head back home. She hadn't broken the news to her family yet; she had wanted to talk to the two of them first. And despite their firm insistence that they were all in and would help her in every way they could, she seemed to think it would be a good idea to give them some space for a few days to discuss.

And - yeah, she probably had a point. Quentin _was _all in, but his mind was swirling in chaos, and as certain and energized as he felt right now, he knew what came on the other side of that kind of energy, and it wasn't always good.

"You want to do this, right?" Eliot said. Still calm. Quentin was having a hard time gauging his mood, which he hated. He crossed the cottage to sit down at the table with Eliot, staring him down as he munched on leftovers from breakfast.

"I mean, I wasn't hoping for it _right now_ or anything, but - yeah. I always thought I'd be a dad," Quentin said. They'd never discussed it before. Maybe they should have.

"I never thought I would be," Eliot said. His voice still sounded _weird_.

"But you're going to be," Quentin said, his head snapping up. "You know that, right? I'm not - El, this is both of us or neither of us."

"I could always be Uncle Eliot," Eliot said, that undefinable _something_ coloring his tone.

"That's not what I want," Quentin said, alarmed. "I'm not having a baby with Ari where you're just some - third party, off to the side. And we don't even know for sure that - I mean, biologically speaking - and anyway, the two of us have about the same right to claim fatherhood, if you look at it more holistically - "

Thankfully, Eliot cut him off at this point, tugging on his wrist and pulling him forward so he could bury his head in Quentin's stomach from where he was sitting. "I get it, Q. I know. As long as Arielle is okay with it, I'm - I meant it, I'm all in."

"Will you please tell me what you're thinking?" Quentin asked. Sometimes the direct approach backfired with Eliot, if he really wasn't ready to share, but sometimes it was a good way to head off a freak-out.

"We used prophylactic spells," Eliot said. Which - honestly wasn't at the top of things that Quentin personally had been thinking about. "That's currently where my worry is, because if those things aren't effective, then - "

"Then we've been having unprotected sex," Quentin said. He frowned, and went over to find a scrap of paper and some charcoal. "Here, sketch out the circumstances for me." Eliot put down the piece of bacon he'd been about to eat, and quickly worked out the spell on paper. It was giving Quentin a visceral Brakebills flashback to watch Eliot write out a spell long-hand, the way they'd each learned to do in their first year. When he was done, they both stared at it for a moment, and then Eliot gave a little sigh, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing his forehead.

"Fuck."

"What?"

"Arielle's Fillorian," Eliot said simply, and he gestured at one corner of the spell-work, were a particular squiggle indicated a spell target limited to 'mankind.' Quentin had always taken that to just be a general annotation to encompass any and all... _people_. It was the tiniest popper, just a small finger wiggle - an accent to most spell-work that involved putting an affect on a living person. But maybe it _was_ Earth-specific, now that he thought about it.

"Well - oops," Quentin said, looking at Eliot.

"Fuck," Eliot said again. "Fuck, this is my fault - "

"Eliot, that's crazy," Quentin said. "It takes two, or in this case three, to tango."

"Yeah," Eliot said. And now Quentin knew that Eliot was seriously distressed, because he didn't even mock him for the goofy analogy. Eliot sighed again, and then scrubbed his hands down his face. Then he tugged on Quentin's arm again and pulled him down into his lap, wrapping him up in a hug. The chair wasn't really big enough for them to sit together this way, but Quentin wouldn't have moved for the world. "Jesus, Q. I - this wasn't what I thought would happen when we decided to make a life for ourselves here."

Underneath his own panic, Quentin had already started to feel excited - overjoyed, even - at the prospect of having a child. But he could tell that Eliot wasn't in that same head-space as him. Fair enough, of course, but it was causing a bit of a damper on his happiness. "El, I'm - I don't know. I'm sorry if - "

Eliot squeezed him hard to stop him from talking. "I keep thinking about Fray."

Oh.

_Oh_.

"Eliot, God. I'm sorry."

"I spend all of my misery-energy on missing Margo, you know, because somehow that's easier to take. Whenever I think about Fen or - or my _daughter_, I just - it's too much. It fucking kills me. I never even got to find out if I could have been a good father to her or not, and I now I'll never..."

He trailed off abruptly, and Quentin knew why. Eliot had almost just said the _thing_, the thing neither of them ever said out loud. The longer they were in Fillory, the less likely it seemed that they'd actually solve the mosaic or return back to their own time. And if they confronted that thought head-on, it tended to promote a great deal of pain and anxiety in both of them. Missing Julia and his dad and Alice was manageable for Quentin because he could still think, even after more than three years, that he'd get a chance to see them again someday. Even if it took decades. The word _never_ was forbidden between them, by unspoken agreement.

"You're an amazing father," Quentin said, confident. "You're a natural at taking care of people, El. You know that."

"Taking care of you is different," Eliot said. "You're not _helpless, _Q. But I'm not equipped for... a baby is just - God, I could do a number on an innocent child. I don't want all of my shit piled on top of a kid. Nobody deserves that."

Quentin really didn't want to pull away from Eliot, but he did, leaning back and letting Eliot's arms keep him from slipping out of Eliot's lap. He stared him down, making sure Eliot was really looking at him, before speaking. "Eliot. Take a look at your life right now. You're doing fucking amazing. We have a home here. We have friends, a _community_. You have a partner who adores you, and despite what you said when this all started, you aren't fucking it up even a little bit."

Eliot smiled at him, and bit his lip, clearly pleased. "Not even a little bit?" he echoed.

"Nope. I'm so fucking happy, and it's because of you. I hope that's not a surprise to you."

Eliot's grin widened, and he tilted his head up for Quentin's inevitable kiss. There were a lot of very obvious reasons why Quentin enjoyed sitting on Eliot's lap, in situations both sexual and otherwise. But one of the fringe benefits was that his head was slightly above Eliot's this way, changing their usual angle. Even as Eliot's arms tightened around him and pulled them flush together, Quentin took control of the kiss, cupping Eliot's face in his hands and tilting his head just slightly backwards, moving slow and steady even as Eliot tried to nip and bite at him, asking for more. They kept it up for a few long minutes, until Quentin could feel Eliot's stressed and rigid muscles relaxing under the continuous touch. He smiled into the kiss. Eliot was a difficult nut to crack in some instances, but sometimes he really was too easy.

"Okay, this pep talk is actually making me a little worried about you," Eliot said, a glint of amusement in his eyes as he pulled away from the kiss. "Anyone could have predicted that I'd be panicking, but I would have put money on you _joining_ me, not calming me down."

Quentin laughed. "I think it's on a time-release or something. You'd best believe you're going to have to talk me off the ledge before too long." Then he winced as a flash of pain flickered over Eliot's eyes. "Sorry. Sorry, honey, bad choice of words."

There were things they joked about, and there were things they didn't.

Eliot shook his head after a moment, his smile easy and affectionate once again. "No ledges, no running. For either of us."

And Quentin kissed him again, sealing a promise.

* * *

When Arielle next stopped by, it was with an invitation to join the family for dinner at the farm. As they road back on Arielle's cart, she gave them a warning: "You know my family. They're not the _most_ old-fashioned people you've ever met, but the whole child-out-of-wedlock thing is still a little hard for them to take."

"Just so we're prepared," Eliot said, glancing back over his shoulder at where Quentin and Arielle were both sitting (he was driving, although Chartreuse, an old reliable horse of the non-talking variety, was perfectly capable of taking the route with almost no guidance), "what exactly did you tell dear old mom and dad?"

"That Quentin was the father," Arielle said bluntly. "They know I'm - um. Free-spirited, but I didn't feel like mentioning..."

Eliot laughed, and Quentin smiled at the sound. It was a real laugh, genuine amusement. He didn't seem upset to have been removed from the potential fatherhood pool, at least where Arielle's family was concerned. "Okay. So you and Quentin had _relations._ They obviously know the two of you aren't _together_, though."

"Right," Arielle said. "They're - smiling politely about the whole thing. They know you want to be involved, and they're determined to make us all one happy family."

"That includes Eliot," Quentin said firmly, and Arielle smiled at him.

"Of course." Then she paused, frowning slightly. "Listen, were the two of you serious about me and the baby moving to the cottage with you? Because - listen, I love my family, and I know they'd want me to stay on the farm, but honestly I could do with a bit of space. And if that was a real offer - "

"It was," said Quentin, with emphasis. He and Eliot had spent a great deal of time talking things over - they even had a few basic plans sketched out for how to build an extension on to the back of the cottage for extra room.

"Okay," Arielle said, letting out a relieved breath. "Okay, good."

When they arrived at the Ashmore farm, they had barely dismounted from the cart when Eliot was approached by Rodney, Arielle's eldest brother, who wanted his advice about ideal harvesting timetables. Quentin smirked a little evilly at him as he was ushered away. It was his own damn fault for letting slip that he had farming experience.

But shortly after that, Quentin was regretting Eliot's absence. The talk he got from Arielle's parents wasn't a _shovel talk_ in the strictest meaning of the term, but it was far from the usual warm welcome he had come to expect from them in the past. At one point, Mrs. Ashmore had pointedly asked for Arielle's help bringing tea in from the kitchen, leaving Quentin alone with Mr. Ashmore.

"You should know," he said, coughing in a faux-casual sort of way, "my daughter is a very special woman."

"I agree, Mr. Ashmore," Quentin said quickly.

"I've told you before, call me Rod," Mr. Ashmore said. Quentin nodded, his throat filled with cement. Why the fuck wasn't Eliot back yet? He'd rarely needed moral support more than he did at this moment. "Quentin. You don't need to be afraid of me. I'm flattered if you're at all intimidated by me, but I don't kid myself about my little girl. I know she's got her own life. I can't be angry with you for what's happened." He leaned forward in his chair. "Although we don't discuss it openly, you ought to know that our eldest was already five months along when me and the missus were married."

Quentin blinked at that, because the obvious implication of this observation was pretty clear. "Mr. - uh. Rod. I care so much for Arielle. And me and my partner are going to be there for her and the baby. But - but we're not getting married. I think Arielle already mentioned that to you."

"She did," a voice said from the doorway. Mrs. Ashmore was back, Arielle trailing behind. "And we obviously can't do anything to force the issue, but I would highly advise you to reconsider."

"_Mother," _Arielle said, flushing. She set the tea tray down on the table and resumed her seat next to Quentin. Nobody touched their cups, or the tasty-looking pastries. "I've told you both, Quentin can't marry me, he's in a serious relationship with someone else."

"We're well aware of that, dear," Mrs. Ashmore said, her normally kind and open face slightly pinched. Quentin was fairly confident that this wasn't any sort of slight against his relationship with Eliot - Arielle's youngest brother Jack and his husband Leon also lived on the farm with the extended family, and he'd never once picked up any tension on their behalf. He supposed it was more than fair that Arielle's mother have her qualms, however, given that her daughter was having a baby with someone she wasn't even in a proper relationship with. "You understand that while _we_ of course, are perfectly understanding of the... ah... _situation_ as it stands, there might be others who are less gracious."

"Gracious about what?" Arielle snapped. She placed a hand against Quentin's elbow, seeking support and also giving it. Quentin scooted slightly closer on the couch, once again wishing desperately for Eliot. Maybe Rodney Jr. was keeping Eliot away intentionally, now that he thought about it. "This is my choice, not yours. Quentin and Eliot are going to be excellent parents to our kid, and that's all that matters."

Mr. Ashmore sighed, leaning forward on his knees so he could stare imploringly into Arielle's eyes. "Please be pragmatic, my dear. Without any legal claim to the child, Quentin and Eliot can't possibly provide the baby with full protection. And should you choose to rely on them, what's to stop them from picking up and leaving at the drop of a hat?"

"We wouldn't," Quentin cut in, fierce. But he could feel a prickle of discomfort deep inside of him. This was another thing that he and Eliot had discussed - what if they _did_ complete the mosaic, and were forced to leave Ari and the child behind? Could they bring them along back to Earth? Would Ari _want_ that? Step one was telling Arielle the full truth. They hadn't gotten around to it yet, and somehow this strained conversation with both of Arielle's parents present seemed the wrong avenue for that particular bombshell.

"I trust Quentin and Eliot both," Arielle said, and Quentin was surprised to see tears shining in her eyes. "And once again, I'm not a kid anymore. This is my call. I want you to be involved, but you're going to need to get on board with the situation in order for that to happen." She stood. "Come on, Quentin."

"Um." Quentin followed suit, standing and then nodding rather awkwardly at the Ashmores. "Thank you for the tea."

* * *

**ELIOT**

Eliot found Quentin and Arielle strolling among the plum tree grove, walking slow and steady between the rows. "Hey, how'd the ambush go?" he asked, keeping his voice intentionally light. He reached them and gave each a kiss on the cheek, slipping easily in between the two.

"It was very ambush-y," Quentin said. "What's Rodney's stance on all this?"

"My brothers are all totally on my side," Arielle answered before Eliot had a chance to. "They actually respect that I'm a grown woman and can make my own decisions."

"On your side?" Eliot said, raising an eyebrows. "About what, exactly?"

"It's not important," Arielle said, waving an impatient hand.

"Ari's parents want me to marry her," Quentin scoffed.

Eliot's chest was filled abruptly with ice. He cleared his throat, trying to dislodge the sick feeling that had just filled him. "Ah."

"It's not important," Arielle said. "They - they want what's best for me and the baby, and they seem to think the security of a formal marriage will help, in case - "

"Something happens to one of us," Quentin said. Eliot studied his face. There was a contemplative little frown tugging down the corners of his mouth, and his brow was furrowed. The cold feeling of dread grew.

"They have a point," Eliot said, barely more than a whisper. Quentin and Arielle both stopped walking abruptly.

Quentin turned to stare at him, his mouth falling open. "Excuse me?"

"I just meant - " Eliot said. He gave Quentin a significant look, leaning back a trunk of the nearest tree. "If you were to one day - be _unavailable_, at least you'd be leaving your kid with your name. He or she could even have a claim to the cottage, probably, if we even _own _it - hey, do you think Fillory has like... squatters rights?"

"El," Quentin said, unimpressed. "What the fuck."

"Q," he said back, matching his tone. "It makes a certain amount of sense, is all I'm saying."

"It makes absolutely no sense at all," Quentin said, stubborn. Then his eyes faltered, and he turned to Arielle. "No offense, I just meant - "

"That you're in love with Eliot?" Arielle said. "Don't worry, that's not new information to me. And I - " Arielle paused to swallow. "I love you, Quentin. And you, Eliot. But - I don't want to get married unless... unless it's real."

For some reason, something close to _irritation_ was crowding its way into Eliot's chest now. They were both so - idealistic. Sweet and naive and adorable, but, as much as he hated to even think it, _wrong_. Didn't they see the obvious?

"Q. I think we should tell her. Right now."

"Tell me what?" Arielle said quickly.

"Now?" Quentin said, momentarily startled out of his anger. But then the glare fell back into place. "Don't change the subject, El - "

"I'm actually not," Eliot said, "as much as I really don't want to be having this particular discussion, this - this has to be part of it. Arielle deserves all of the information, don't you think?"

Quentin looked at him, hard and searching, for a long moment. Eliot rushed to continue before he could think of an excuse to put this conversation off.

"We should sit," Eliot said, putting a hand on Arielle's back to guide her towards a tree. They found a spot and spread out on the ground, Arielle leaning her back up against the trunk. For a moment, he stared helplessly at Arielle, and then at Quentin, unsure even how to start, while Quentin went back to glaring daggers at him. He knew he was in for a not-so-fun discussion later about the whole marriage thing, but he pushed that thought aside, focusing instead on the difficult explanations they were facing currently.

Finally, Quentin seemed to realize that Eliot had a point. Or at least, Eliot thought wryly, he realized that he should save his energy for later fights. They'd already agreed to tell Arielle who they really were, although they'd both thought they'd wait a little longer to work out what to say. Quentin, braver than Eliot as always, reached for Arielle's hand and squeezed it. "You're aware, obviously, that Eliot and I aren't from... around here."

Arielle's face brightened. "Oh, wow. Am I about to get clarity on the most talked-about mystery in the greater Langdale area?"

"People are still gossiping about us?" Quentin said, sounding distressed. Eliot lifted a hand and brushed some hair out of his face, suddenly incredibly fond of him, despite the somewhat sick feeling still pooling in his stomach. Quentin was often adorably naive about the power and intrigue of really good gossip. Quentin didn't flinch away from his touch, which Eliot took to be a good sign.

"Of course people gossip about you," Arielle said. "But now I'm getting the genuine scoop, right?"

Quentin sighed, looked at Eliot again, and - said it. "Eliot and I - we're not from Fillory."

And with that basic statement out of the way, Eliot and Quentin sat under the shade of purple leaves, and told their dear friend the whole story.

* * *

"So, uh. We're about to have one hell of a fight," Quentin said. "If you need to hydrate or anything, now's the time for it."

Eliot smiled at that, even though he knew Quentin wasn't joking. They'd kept a tense peace on the trip back home, tacitly agreeing that the blow-out they were about to have needed to happen privately. Ari had stayed at the farm to keep appeasing her parents. Her next task was one that Eliot didn't envy - she had to break the news that she'd be moving out.

"No thanks, I'm good," Eliot said, falsely cheerful. "Fight away, Q."

Quentin was manifestly unamused by his attempt at levity. The two of them had moved on auto-pilot over to the mosaic once they'd said goodbye to the farmhand who had driven them home. Sometimes hard discussions were made easy by the busy-work of moving tiles around, but Eliot had the feeling that neither of them would be focusing on the puzzle for this particular confrontation.

"Eliot, I'm not marrying Arielle," Quentin said, biting the words out. So this was going to be one of _those_ fights, the ones where Quentin had a thesis statement and stuck to it, not budging even against the face of a logical argument. Oh, goody. Eliot was already exhausted.

"Quentin," he said, trying to start from a place of rationality.

"Don't _Quentin_ me. What the fuck was that bullshit about - about _it makes sense_? What makes sense about me getting _married_? Explain that to me."

"Do you actually want me to explain, or do you just want to do your best brick wall imitation and tell me I'm wrong, regardless of what I say next?" Eliot said. He swallowed, carefully un-clenching his jaw. He hadn't meant for that to sound so _bitchy_.

"So I'm too irrational to even argue with," Quentin said, irrationally. "Is that what I'm hearing?"

"Oh, come on," Eliot said. "Please just admit to me that you're worked up right now. I can't have a serious conversation with you if you - "

"Of course I'm _worked up_. My _boyfriend_ is trying to marry me off to someone else! If you want out of this, El, you know there are simpler ways to go about it."

"Fuck you," Eliot said. His blood had caught on fire all at once. How _dare_ he say - how could he even fucking jokeabout - "_Fuck_ you. That's such crap. If I wanted to leave, Q, I'd be gone. Do you see me leaving?"

"Maybe not _physically_, but you're trying to - "

"I'm not breaking up with you!" Eliot interrupted, exasperated. "I'm not - Q. _Quentin_, I'm just - I'm asking you to look past the trivial stuff and think about your kid."

"_Our_ kid," Quentin said, frigid. He was standing with his arms wrapped around himself, which meant he was feeling particularly shitty and vulnerable. Eliot wanted to wrap his arms around him instead, his instinct always to sooth when Quentin was upset, but he maintained a fair distance, keeping his hands still at his sides.

"Yes. _Our kid_. Yours, mine, Arielle's. You know I'm making sense - "

"But marriage - "

"Quentin, I'm not trying to push you away, I _promise_ you."

"That's what it feels like," Quentin said. But Eliot could see that he was calming down despite himself, if only slightly. His voice was slightly less brittle when he continued. "I just don't get why you're hopping on board with this idea, when Ari and I both agree it's total crap. Arielle's parents don't want their grand-kid to be a _bastard_, and suddenly you agree with them? You think that shit means anything?"

"No," Eliot said, his blood thrumming in his veins. "No. You think I relish the idea of you marrying someone else? But our lives don't fucking _belong _to us anymore, Q. This might be what needs to happen, for us all to be the best parents we can be."

"So the best father I can be is promoting hetero-normative bullshit for my offspring? Playing happy home with a woman I'm not in love with, for the sake of _propriety_?"

"Hey, don't you dare fucking accuse me of promoting hetero-_anything_," Eliot said. It was a joke, and a tiny bit more of Quentin's defensive shell cracked away. Eliot was pretty sure he saw his lip twitch. But his arms were still curled around his stomach, as hard as ever. "Q," he continued, feeling his own stress and anger cooling. He just wanted Quentin to understand him, wanted the stupid band-aid to be ripped off so he could figure out how to make himself be okay with this. He honestly couldn't believe he was arguing in favor of something that was going to _hurt_ so bad. Maybe his self-sabotaging days weren't quite behind him, after all. "Q, if you and Ari get married, that means a record in Whitespire, that says if something happens to Ari, nobody can take the kid away from us."

As Eliot had known it would, this particular argument stopped Quentin dead in his tracks. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

"Fuck."

"Will you come here?" Eliot said, suddenly tired of not touching him. Things were always worse when he wasn't touching Quentin.

Quentin came forward immediately, and for a long moment they stayed wrapped up in one another. Eliot pressed his face hard into Quentin's hair, breathing him in. "Q, I love you," he said, because he could. Because he felt it, and he _wanted_ to.

"I love you more than anything," Quentin said back, his voice muffled into Eliot's chest. "I still don't know if it's a good idea, El."

"Arielle does," Eliot said, still not pulling back from the hug. But these words made Quentin go stiff, pulling back from him enough to look up into Eliot's face.

"What? She didn't say - "

"Did you see the look on her face, Q?" Eliot said. "We just told our best friend that we might up vanish one day with no warning, and she's _scared. _I don't blame her."

"She has to know that we'd never leave her unprovided for," Quentin said, frowning.

"But that's just it. She's choosing to rely on us, to raise a kid with us, and we might just fuck off and leave her someday. We won't even really have a say about it."

"If the key does - I mean, if we really do it, El, we could always send the key through and - "

"Stay?" Eliot said, his throat closing up. It wasn't that he hadn't thought about it, since learning Arielle was pregnant. "And abandon our friends, quit half way through our quest? Never see them again?"

"I don't know, I just - "

"We don't even know how it will work, Q, we might not have a _choice_."

"Marriage just seems like kind of an extreme reaction to the situation," Quentin said, his eyebrows furrowed. He tilted himself forward again, pressing his forehead into Eliot's chest. Eliot's heart twisted and shot up to his throat. Quentin was hearing him. He was letting himself be convinced. Which was, you know, what Eliot _wanted_, ostensibly. It sucked so fucking bad.

"Not _that_ extreme," he said lightly. "It's - a piece of paper that protects our kid. I think that's worth serious consideration."

Quentin sighed, and Eliot could feel the warmth of his breathe even through his shirt. He recognized that sigh. It was the sound Quentin made when he was relieved or settled, filled with the peace that came with making a decision. Well, _fucking ouch_. Eliot _did_ think this was a good idea. And he could appreciate logically that it didn't mean he and Quentin would have to change their relationship whatsoever. And yet in this moment, it still felt like shit.

"We'll see what Ari says," Quentin said, and then he tilted his face up to press a series of light, soft kisses along Eliot's collarbone and up the column of his neck. "Let's not think about it anymore. Not right now."

Eliot kissed him on the forehead, soft, then again, harder. "It'll be okay, Q. It doesn't have to be - " he coughed, and wished that his voice would stop shaking. "It doesn't have to change everything."

Quentin didn't dignify that with a response, just nuzzled his nose in against Eliot's pulse, his kisses growing sloppier, until he was suckling a mark into the base of Eliot's neck. Eliot understood the impulse, the imperative urge to _mark_ and _claim_, and -

"Kiss me," Eliot said, his voice rough, and Quentin lifted his head immediately towards him, like a magnet. Eliot moved his hands off of Quentin's back and framed his face, leaning down to meet Quentin's lips. Perhaps he meant to be gentle, at least to start, but he wasn't, and Quentin was decidedly _not gentle_ right back at him, biting hard and breathing harshly, getting his own arms around Eliot's waist so he could pull them flush together. They just kissed that way for a long moment, both of them becoming increasingly frantic, right in the middle of the mosaic.

He wanted to feel Quentin and make Quentin feel _him_. Wanted, at least in this moment, to erase the existence of Arielle and the baby and the mosaic and the quest and _everything_ that wasn't the two of them. He needed Quentin and nothing else. He moved, walking backwards and nearly tripping over the frame of the mosaic, tugging Quentin towards the cottage. He wasn't aiming to go inside, though - he just needed a wall to lean against. There wasn't time to get to a bed. Not now. He needed - he just - _needed_.

The second he'd reached the side of the house, Quentin's lips still fused to his own, he tugged on Quentin's waist, and Quentin, bless his heart, knew exactly what he wanted. He jumped up, wrapping his legs around Eliot's waist, kissing deeper into his mouth as he did so. They'd discovered fairly early on in their relationship that Eliot could use his telekinesis to take some of Q's weight, and that as a result, Quentin could ride him while Eliot was still standing.

Impatient in a way that only Quentin had ever made him, Eliot used magic to help get their clothes off faster, separating himself from Q for a few torturous seconds until they were both naked, completely exposed in the Fillorian daylight. And then Eliot tugged Quentin back up into his arms, where he belonged. Quentin moaned loudly when Eliot squeezed his ass in both of his hands, pulling hard and pushing himself forward so their groins were shoved roughly together - he could feel Quentin already completely hard, grazing against his stomach. "God, El," Quentin said, panting into the side of his face. "Just fuck me, okay? I need you to - "

"So needy," Eliot said, as if he wasn't already so hard it hurt. The need to be inside of Quentin was overwhelming, a physical thing he was rapidly losing the ability to control. He let his mind slip in to a state of magic, and Quentin gasped, jerking forward and writhing against him when he felt the gentle pull of magic that allowed him enough buoyancy for what they were about to do. Eliot traced familiar tuts along Quentin's skin and shivered when Q gasped again, this time at the sensation of being suddenly opened and slicked up, ready for -

"_Now_," Quentin demanded, and, using Eliot's shoulder to balance himself with one hand, he reached his other hand around to grasp at Eliot's cock, and then he guided himself down, and - and -

"Jesus God, you're - you feel so good, Q," Eliot said, holding him close and tight. "You're unbelievable. You're - " _the best thing that's ever happened to me_, _the only person who's ever known all of me_, Eliot thought, and didn't say. If he said it, he'd start crying.

Quentin started to move, while Eliot leaned back against the side of the cottage and focused on all of the different things he needed to focus on in order for this to work - his magic, taking on Quentin's weight; his arms, holding Quentin steady. His legs, keeping himself upright with the help of the wall behind him. He was already starting to shake, his muscles straining and his skin vibrating with need. They didn't fuck this way very often, because it involved a lot of _work_. Quentin had to set the pace, and it was easy in this position for him to lift up too high on accident and slip entirely off of him, or overbalance. His legs, wrapped around Eliot's waist, were trapped against the wall. It was difficult for either of them to get a free hand to touch Quentin's cock, since they both needed their arms for balance and support. Sometimes it wasn't worth it, too many logistics for them both to manage, especially when they were worked up and greedy for each other.

But in other ways, the work was what made this one of Eliot's favorite ways to have Quentin. They had to fight against the pull of mindless desire enough to control their bodies, keep a tight leash on things in order to guide them both to pleasure. There was a sharp, tight satisfaction to working for it, straining for every gasp and moan they could wring from one another.

"El," Quentin panted against his temple, sliding against him, moving up and down at a maddeningly slow pace. "El - _fuck_, _fuck_, you're so perfect - "

"No, you," Eliot groaned, which maybe wasn't his best line, but _god_. _God_ it was true. Quentin was already gasping for every breath, beginning to bounce up and down at a faster and faster pace the longer they went on, until Eliot felt a pool of molten lava start to coalesce deep in his gut. He wanted to hold it back, but his vision was already growing blurry, his body held taught in aching anticipation. "I'm - close," he managed, then tilted his head down to bite at Quentin's shoulder. He used his hands to help pull Quentin down on him harder, twitching his hips forward as best as he could without losing their precarious balance, and was rewarded when Quentin cried out, starting to shake even as he forced himself to maintain his rhythm.

"I love you," Quentin said. "Eliot, you're the love of my life, _I love you_ \- "

Even as he started to come, Eliot was able to spare a brief, somewhat hysterical thought for what his younger self would have thought about this moment. The idea that words of devotion from a long-time partner could trigger one of the best orgasms he'd ever had would have seemed patently absurd to the Eliot of the past, the one who hadn't known the unique and indescribable pleasure of being loved by Quentin Coldwater.

He came for a long time, groaning wordlessly and throwing his head back against the wall of the cabin. He almost couldn't believe how good he felt, like every dark thought he'd ever had was suddenly, blissfully gone, every painful experience washed away in the waves of white-hot, cleansing pleasure. He lost his hold on his telekinesis at some point, with no clear idea of how much time had passed, and felt the full weight of Quentin's body suddenly pinning him to the wall. Through the haze of sensation still rolling through him, it took him a while to realize that Quentin was moaning and twitching and coming too, spilling between them and crying out _El, El, El_, against Eliot's sweaty skin.

"Oh, _fuck_," Eliot said, when he was capable of speech. There were bright lights dancing in his eyes. His chest felt tight, his stomach muscles twitching; the pads of his fingers were going numb. He needed to sit down, but Quentin was still clinging to him like a limpet, all four limbs wrapped around him as tight as he could manage. He was shaking violently, and Eliot moved on instinct to sooth him, petting his fingers along Quentin's hair and down his spine. "_Fuck_, did you just come without - "

"Unngh," Quentin confirmed, wordless, and Eliot's spent dick gave a twitch where it was still pressed deep inside of Quentin. Quentin's muscles clenched down and Eliot thrust forward once, a mindless reflex to chase every ounce of pleasure he could wring from his body. But then his legs really did start to give out, and he worked quickly to lift Quentin down off of him and slide to the ground, cuddling his mostly incoherent partner against his chest.

"You're _incredible,_ Q," Eliot said, helpless, as he kissed him everywhere he could reach, tightening his arms around Quentin hard enough that he was sure it hurt. He knew Quentin wouldn't mind, though - his own hands were pressed tight into the skin of Eliot's back, and Eliot felt every pressure point like a brand, a promise from Quentin that he was wanted and loved.

"You - " Quentin started, then hiccuped out a sob, his head lolling weakly into the crook of Eliot's neck, even as his arms shook from pressing them together so tightly. "You know this is - _this_ is what I want," he finally managed, and Eliot sobered, forced his breathing to slow down so he could hear Quentin's quiet words. "_This_. You and me, always."

Eliot swallowed hard. Neither of them had managed the tuts to clean them up yet - he could still feel the stickiness of sweat and come between them, the physical evidence of something he had never been able to find adequate words to describe. He could almost sense Quentin's frustration, heard the rumble of fear and grief in his voice as he too struggled to name the desperate thing they shared, and Eliot hated himself for one brief, bright moment for not knowing what to say to put his mind at ease. There weren't words. He and Quentin were everything and more. They were beautiful together. Eventually, he settled for the best he could think of in the moment: "I do know. I know, Q, I promise."

And they stayed that way, naked and crushed together, leaning against the house and breathing each other in, for a long, long time.

* * *

"We've talked it over," Quentin said three days later, staring Arielle down with a level of composure that Eliot wished he could imitate. They were standing on the mosaic, just feet away from the spot where Arielle had told them she was going to have a baby. At some point they'd been planning to sit down on the bench, but for whatever reason, this conversation seemed easier to process while standing. "And your parents are right, Ari. Given all of the variables, it's a good idea to make our relationship legally binding."

Arielle was silent for a long time. She wasn't looking at Quentin at all, but she kept glancing over at Eliot, uncertainty flickering over her features. Eliot had Quentin's hand gripped tight in his, needing the stability of touch.

"My parents are pushy," Arielle said. "But that doesn't mean they're right. And anyway, it's just them, it's not like my whole family thinks it's a good idea. My Aunt Rita..."

"Ari," Eliot interrupted. "Your parents are pushy because they're worried about you and the baby. They make a good point, and you know that as well as we do. I saw it on your face when we told you about our quest."

"It's just..." Arielle bit off on whatever she was going to say, her eyes darting now between the two of them. "I don't want you to feel like you have to do this." And despite Arielle's hesitant stance, Eliot knew immediately that the debate was all but over. She agreed with them - her parents had worn her down, or maybe just their story about where they really came from had done it. Anyone would crave stability after hearing something as crazy as _that_. Now it was just the matter of convincing Arielle that they were really okay with everything.

Quentin squeezed Eliot's hand harder. "We could do this, be his parents, without getting married," he admitted. "But Ari, if something happens to any of us, I don't want there to be any wiggle room. It's best if it's legal."

"But - the two of you - "

"We've talked about it," Eliot cut in, as sincere as he could possibly manage. "We love you, Arielle. We both love you. And if you and Quentin need to stand up and tie your hands together in order to protect our kid, then - that's what you need to do."

"Our kid," Arielle repeated, a whisper.

"That part's non-negotiable, I'm afraid," Eliot said. He was vaguely proud of himself for keeping his voice steady. "I'm not going anywhere."

Arielle shook her head, dislodging a couple of tears. "No, of _course_ you're not, I - the three of us will do this together. If - you're _sure_."

"It's only a ritual," Quentin said. "It's a ritual that makes us _family_. We're both sure, if you are."

It sounded simple to say it out loud like that, and sometimes Eliot could convince himself that he was fine with it. Nothing was really changing here. It didn't matter if Quentin was technically married to someone else - it wouldn't affect them in the slightest. Unfortunately, Eliot had actually learned how to be honest with himself over the past few years. And despite what he and Quentin had told each other, each pretending a confidence he knew they did not feel, it _would_ make a difference. How could it not?

At the end of the day, though, it didn't matter. Not really. Not in the face of everything else. Not in the face of bringing a new life into the world.

Arielle was crying and smiling at the same time, and she moved forward, trying to wrap both of them in a hug. "Okay," she said, her face buried in Quentin's shoulder. "Okay, so we're doing this."

Quentin nodded at her as she pulled away from the hug, then laughed a little awkwardly, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. "I don't have a ring or anything."

"Uh - " Arielle cleared her throat, blushing as she took a single step away from the two of them. Something tense inside of Eliot unclenched slightly at the sight of her awkwardness - there was so much about this situation that was painful, but he felt not a single ounce of resentment towards Arielle herself. Which was honestly a very good sign, considering they were soon to be co-parenting a child.

And then, to Eliot's astonishment, Arielle got down on one knee.

"Quentin?" she asked. Quentin stuttered backwards, knocking into Eliot, who put a steadying hand on his back and held him in place, chuckling in spite of the spikes of shock still running up and down his skin. God, this woman really was something.

"Ari," Q breathed. Eliot held his own breath, petrified in the face of what was happening. Arielle continued, her expression solemn.

"Quentin Coldwater, will you marry me, and be a father to our child?"

Quentin nodded numbly, seemingly incapable of speech. Arielle grinned brightly at him, and then just when Eliot expected Arielle to stand back up, she swiveled slightly, still on her knee, and faced Eliot.

"Eliot Waugh, will you be my partner, and Quentin's, and be a father to our child?"

Eliot's knees nearly gave way. He felt Quentin's hand grip tight around his, and had to work for a moment to remember how to squeeze it back. "Oh, God, Arielle."

"Well?"

"You shouldn't be kneeling in your delicate condition," Eliot said, because - what were _words_ honestly? What the fuck was happening and how was breathing supposed to work, again? His vision had gone blurry with tears.

"El," Quentin nudged him. Arielle giggled, but she was crying too.

"Yes. _Yes_, of course I will."

Quentin and Eliot each took one of Arielle's hands and pulled her to her feet, and for a long while the three of them stood hugging one another, none of them bothering to even pretend they weren't crying. Eliot tried to remember if he'd ever felt so - _much_ \- all at once. Happy, melancholy, excited, terrified. None of these words even came close to describing it.

He'd been preparing, he realized, to feel like an outsider, no matter how much Quentin and Arielle insisted differently. He'd been preparing to step back, to love them and love the kid as best as he could, superfluous to the nucleus of a new family. But now, as he cradled both of them against his chest, his longer arms holding them easily, he didn't feel that way at all.

He felt - _confident_. Like he could do this, he could love Quentin with everything in him, and he could grow that love, adapt and shape it to fit Arielle into his heart, and the baby - whoever he or she was - would fit, too, as easy as anything. It was the greatest gift he'd ever received, and the reverence he was experiencing in this moment was the closest thing he'd ever known to a religious experience while dead sober.

"I love you," he said, disbelieving, his heart thumping in double-time with a frantic joy. His head was buried in Quentin's hair, but in that moment he couldn't have said for sure who he was talking to. Maybe Quentin, the man who had taught him how to love selflessly, and how joy and pleasure were even better when experienced with stability and honesty. Maybe Arielle, the sweet, fiery woman who had lit up their lives and created a vital bridge to the rest of their community.

And maybe both of them, right along with the nameless life growing deep within Ari's body, who was currently cradled invisible and waiting between the three of them, safe in the center of a shared embrace.


	6. Chapter Six - In Which There is a Wedding and a Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you a happy journey, and I stand by that promise, but there is some light angst in this chapter, as Quentin, Eliot, and Arielle adjust to their new reality. Thank you all so much for sticking with me for this story!

**QUENTIN**

The night before the wedding, Eliot was in a possessive, desperate sort of mood, and Quentin was trying very hard to pretend he didn't understand why. Honestly, neither of them had been able to keep their hands off of each other all day, but there was a certain emotional texture to Eliot's touch that was troubling - he kept kissing Quentin like he needed to be reassured that he was still allowed, and putting an arm around his shoulders any time Ari or one of her family members entered the room, like he was staking a claim. It was breaking Quentin's heart a little, but at the same time he also knew where he was coming from. And that there really wasn't too much to be worried about.

Or at least he was _thought _there wasn't. Over the last month, during which Arielle's mother tried to plan the wedding of the century and Arielle tried to slow her down, Quentin and Eliot had put their commitment to "good communication" to the test. They talked over every tiny, insignificant fight or insecurity that had ever come up between them, interrogated themselves and each other on how they felt about all issues relating to their own relationship, their respective relationships with Ari, and their impending fatherhood. And there were a fair few talks with Arielle as well, the three of them discussing both the mundane concerns of room lay-out for the cottage's soon-to-be-built expansion, and _less_ mundane concerns, like decisions about whether or not their sexual relationship was going to continue, or what they'd tell their child when he or she was older about where Quentin and Eliot were from.

The whole thing had resulted in a cycle that was emotionally exhausting, yet undeniably satisfying, at least sexually speaking. The two of them would have a tough, strained conversation, struggling to maintain calm and reasoned attitudes, and then they'd fuck each other to the point of collapse to relieve the tension. He and Eliot hadn't spent this much time in bed together since the first few weeks of their relationship, and honestly, Quentin was grateful for it. He craved that closeness as well, the shaky pretense that things wouldn't _really_ change once Arielle moved in with them full-time, once she was Quentin's _wife_, the strained promise that Quentin and Eliot would still be the center of one another's worlds.

And now, the time had come. Eliot and Quentin had been staying in a guest room at the Ashmore's farmhouse for the past three nights, helping in wedding preparations. They had been banished to their room that night, however, since some of the wedding guests were staying in the big house, and Mrs. Ashmore had tactfully suggested that they hide themselves in their room if they were going to continue _touching_ each other, since not everyone at the wedding was aware of the _situation_.

Arielle had rolled her eyes hugely behind her mother's back, and come forward boldly to kiss both Quentin and Eliot on the mouth before sending them away. The kisses were a sign of support and also an attempt to scandalize her mother, and Quentin and Eliot both giggled happily about the look on Mrs. Ashmore's face as they went to their back bedroom to settle in for the night.

And then after a few minutes of carefree amusement between them, Eliot had pinned Quentin down on the bed and kissed him until neither of them could breathe. "Q," he said, when he finally pulled back, dropping his lips down to the column of his throat. "All the time, every second, I just want to be touching you."

"I want that too," Quentin said, arching up under Eliot to feel every line of him through their clothes. "I always want that."

"Tell me - " Eliot started, and then his breath hitched and he nuzzled his nose in behind Quentin's ear.

"Tell you what?" Quentin asked, wrapping his arms tight around Eliot's back, cradling him like the precious thing he was. "El?"

"Nothing," Eliot finally said, kissing along Quentin's neck until he was nipping at the skin just along the collar of his shirt.

"Eliot," Quentin said. He wondered if he should stop the wandering journey of Eliot's hands, which had made their way up under Quentin's shirt, exploring and petting every inch of skin they could find. Maybe, to say what he was about to say, it would be better to sit up and stop touching. But he couldn't. "Eliot, if you've changed your mind about this, I won't go through with it."

Eliot stilled for just a moment, and then redoubled his efforts, tugging at Quentin's shirt until it was finally up and over his head, before ducking back down to lick and bite at his chest. "And subject you to the wrath of the entire Ashmore clan? The wedding's tomorrow, Q."

"But you're freaking out," Quentin said, and then gasped, jerking up into Eliot as he sucked first one nipple, and then the other, into his mouth. "You're - _ungh_ \- you're freaking out and I don't want to marry her if you're going to be - "

"God," Eliot groaned, resting his forehead for a moment against Quentin's sternum. "I'm pulling out my best moves here, Coldwater."

Quentin laughed, even though nothing was funny. "It's just that this was your idea, and I thought we were all on the same page, but the closer we get to this, the more you - "

Eliot sighed dramatically and sat up, still straddling Quentin's hips. Quentin missed the warmth and weight of him immediately. "Stop, Q," he said. Not _stern_, exactly, but close to it. "I don't think this is what either of us wanted, exactly, but it's okay. It's for our baby." Then he bit his lip, something gentle and mournful filling his eyes. "Anyway, it's unrealistic to expect to get everything you want out of life."

"Okay, what the fuck," Quentin said, tugging on Eliot's arms until he got the idea and sank back on top of him, resuming the wandering path of his lips and hands. "You say something like that to me and you just expect me to go out there tomorrow, and - "

"_I do_," Eliot said, putting an almost cruel emphasis on the words. "I do expect it, Q. And Ari expects it, and her family expects it, and _you_ expect it of yourself."

He punctuated his words by grinding his hips down into Quentin's, and Quentin's vision blurred for a moment, his body arching up without conscious thought into that perfect pressure.

"El, I'm trying to have a serious conversation with you," Quentin said.

"And I'm trying to distract you from it," Eliot replied simply. "We've had every serious conversation about this topic that we're going to have, Q. We came to a level-headed decision, and we're going to stick with it, and since we both _know_ we're going to stick with it, can we please just not _talk_ about it anymore?"

He was grinding incessantly into Quentin now, which was just manifestly unfair. Quentin could feel his brain unspooling.

"Fuck, don't stop doing that," Quentin said, his eyelids shuttering closed as Eliot got his lips around his earlobe, suckling and nibbling in time to the rocking of his hips.

"Mmm, you taste good," Eliot said, removing his lips only to trail them down Quentin's jaw. "We're both wearing too many clothes."

"I know you're going to tell me to stop overthinking shit, but I have to say just one thing," Quentin said, and Eliot groaned, but didn't stop what he was doing - he'd lifted up again temporarily, just to remove his own shirt, and now his hand was moving purposefully down to the fastening of Quentin's pants. Quentin knew his own coherence was a vanishing asset, and he rushed onward: "I'm not leaving you, Eliot. Never. Please promise me that you understand that."

Eliot went still for a moment. Quentin cold feel him hard and hot even through their remaining layers of clothes, but neither of them shifted forward into the pressure they both needed. They just stayed there, staring at each other. And then Eliot seemed to come to a decision. He smiled, and Quentin was relieved to see the light of it reach his eyes.

"Of course I know that," Eliot said, soothing, ducking back down to kiss Quentin with infinite tenderness. And then, right against his lips, he continued: "And I'm not going anywhere either, Q. Tell me you believe me."

Quentin nodded, the motion brushing their lips and noses against one another. "Yes. I believe you. Please kiss me again."

After that they stopped the conversation for a while, or at least they stopped having it with words. But later, when Eliot was deep inside of him and they were both sweating and moaning and holding each other as tightly as they could, chasing the feel of impossible closeness and tenderness, Eliot spoke again, right into the skin of Quentin's neck. "Tell me," he groaned, hoarse and maybe even scared. "Tell me, Q."

And Quentin understood him, knew exactly what they both needed, and answered. "I'm yours, El. Just yours."

Eliot cried out the second he had spoken, and then went still, spilling inside of him and stuttering out - _mine, mine, mine_ as he jerked forward, pressing himself in as deep as he could go. Quentin whimpered at the feel of it, letting the pressure and the ache and the anxiety of the days-weeks-months crest up and over and through him, his own orgasm the gentle pull of a calming tide.

Within moments, Quentin was mostly asleep, cradled in Eliot's arms. But he was still awake enough to hear Eliot's whisper, buried into his hair - "And I'm yours. I'm yours, Q._"_

* * *

If Quentin had ever daydreamed about getting married, he wouldn't have pictured it like this.

Some things about it were as traditional as any Earth ceremony, complete with vows in front of the assembled guests, a first dance, and plenty of free booze. But then of course there were the talking animals in attendance, which always reminded Quentin _vividly_ that he was in Fillory, if he'd ever been in danger of forgetting it. Ostrich the Bear had attended, mingling with the crowd easily despite his usual loner status. And Arnold the giant eagle, along with his entire family, took perches on a small copse of trees to watch the ceremony from a slight distance, since their wings would have blocked the views of the human guests if they'd sat too close.

Of course, the main thing that made this different from any hypothetical wedding Quentin might have imagined for himself was that he wasn't in love with the bride. He loved her. He loved her _so much, _in a way that felt difficult to define. The flavor of that love was maybe what he had hoped he and Julia would have achieved one day, as they grew up out of their childhood dynamic. But then, there were clear differences. He didn't know what Julia felt like under his hands and his lips, didn't know the sounds she made when she was coming. And he knew those things _intimately_ about Arielle, as the very slight concavity of her stomach under her beautiful white dress proved. He wasn't in love with Ari. He was attracted to her, and he loved her, and he _meant_ it when he stood in front of one of Ari's uncles, who performed the ceremony, and promised to be loyal to her always. It didn't much matter that his and Arielle's version of loyalty wasn't what most people at the wedding would have assumed.

Despite his fears, the day wasn't too somber or depressing, and nobody had a last-minute freak-out. If Eliot's eyes were a little dark whenever Quentin chanced to look at him during the reception, that was to be expected. And he dutifully danced with Arielle and Quentin both once the party got into full swing, all of them cheerfully ignoring the curious gossip among the attendees, many of whom knew full well that Quentin and Eliot had been co-habitating in less-than-chaste fashion for years. Arielle's immediate family had a slightly better idea of the truth, but even they probably would have been startled to hear that Eliot had been present when Arielle's baby was conceived, and that the new husband and wife had never actually spent time alone in bed together, nor did they intend to.

Only one small incident stood out in Quentin's mind. Arielle's Aunt Rita, an extremely elderly woman with a severe countenance and wiry frame, had apparently tried to persuade Arielle against the marriage from the beginning. Quentin having never met Aunt Rita, he'd been just the smallest bit insulted at this woman's bias against him, sight unseen. Arielle hadn't seemed too worried about her, though (_"that's just Aunt Rita. She's set in her ways, she's always convinced she's seeing visions and knows what's best_._"_) Quentin had let it go for the most part, but the fact remained that he was living in Fillory where magic abounded and prophecies and fortune tellers weren't automatically to be dismissed.

"You love my niece?" had been Aunt Rita's opening words to him during the reception. They'd never met before, beyond a brief nod hello when Arielle's family had begun arriving for the ceremony earlier that morning. Quentin looked away from the dance floor, where he had been watching Eliot dance with some of the kids, and met Rita's severe expression.

"I do," he said, honestly.

"Hmm. But not as a man should love a woman," Rita said. "Arielle tells me many things."

Was this a homophobia thing? Now? It seemed unlikely, as Quentin hadn't encountered a hint of that in all of his time in Fillory. He frowned, trying to think of how to respond, as he saw a flush-faced Arielle approaching them through the crowd. Before she was in earshot, Rita leaned towards him and said in his ear: "You must be true of heart, to what really matters. If you waver, all will be lost."

"Auntie," Arielle said, coming forward and folding the brittle old woman into her arms. "Are you over here bothering Quentin?"

"Not at all," Quentin said hurriedly, giving Rita a probing look. "She was just telling me to take care of you, is all."

"She forgets sometimes that I'm more than capable of doing that myself," Arielle said, kissing her aunt on the cheek and then spinning to bestow a kiss on Quentin as well. "You _do_, on the other hand, have to come back out there and dance with me. I won't have you on the sidelines at your own wedding, dear."

So, trying to ignore the piercing look of Aunt Rita digging in to the back of his head, he'd gone back out to the dance floor with his wife, meeting Eliot's eyes and calling him over to join in once more. It was like Arielle had said - Rita was old, and set in her ways, and had odd ideas of the way things were supposed to be. It wouldn't do to go jumping at shadows every time someone said something vaguely sinister in Fillory. It was practically a precondition of living there.

And then - it was over, and Quentin was _married_, and he went home with his wife and with his partner, the carriage dropping them off so late that the first rays of sunlight were starting to lighten the edges of the trees. As the three of them stood there outside of the cottage, Quentin realized with a jolt that in all of their discussions, they hadn't nailed down the sleeping arrangements for this particular night. After all, they'd barely started felling wood for the cottage's add-on, so Ari didn't have her own space to retreat. And besides that, it felt depressing to let her go off by herself on her wedding night, no matter how unusual the circumstances.

"Should I leave the newlyweds alone for the evening?" Eliot said, a lilt to his voice that Quentin knew was supposed to be humor. Quentin bristled at the question, whirling on him to protest, but Arielle beat him to it.

"Absolutely _not_," she said, walking straight up to Eliot and kissing him full on the mouth. "You're in your head, Eliot. And we can't have that."

"You're right, it's scary up here," Eliot said, tapping his own forehead solemnly. "And anyway, it was a joke." He was smiling, but he looked away when Quentin tried to catch his eye. "Let's go to bed."

There was no consummating, at least not that night. Instead, after they had all dressed themselves in something comfortable for sleeping, Quentin found himself curled up in the middle of the bed, his head pillowed on Eliot's shoulder, his wife cuddled up against his other side. He imagined he could feel the beginnings of Ari's baby bump pressed up against his lower back, even though she was barely showing. They fell asleep like that, four heartbeats on one bed.

* * *

**ELIOT**

When it was just the three of them, Eliot was fine. He wasn't in denial; he really was _fine_. They kept themselves busy getting ready for the baby, arranging for the back wall of the cottage to be knocked down and two new rooms added on, a nursery and a bedroom for Ari, and most days they were all too exhausted with work to think about the strangeness of their situation. True to what Eliot had insisted to himself and to the others, a formal ceremony actually didn't change the day-to-day of their lives very much at all. Quentin and Eliot still slept curled up together in their bed every night. They still made love on slow winter mornings and fucked each other against the wall in the middle of the day. They still worked on the mosaic, and, with help from Arielle's entire extended family, built the additions for their home. And having Arielle there, once the additional bedroom had an actual door that closed, was honestly a lot of fun, and made work around the house less tedious. Ari didn't have the temperament of a happy home-maker, but she could sew, and she was an excellent cook, and those two things alone were a big help.

But when Ari's family _was_ around, helping with construction and baby-proofing, or when Doady came by with deliveries and messages, when travelers passed through and cooed over Arielle's expanding stomach, something inside of Eliot went cold. It shouldn't have mattered that from the outside, Quentin and Arielle were a married couple with a baby on the way, and Eliot was a glorified roommate. It shouldn't have mattered that in the eyes of the rest of the world, Eliot and Quentin weren't together. It shouldn't have mattered.

But it _did_.

So, he ignored it. Steadfastly. He poured every once of attention into loving his family as much as he could, and he pretended he was getting away with it, even when Quentin gave him concerned looks and opened his mouth like he was going to start a serious conversation. He could almost always kiss him out of these concerned moods, and he abused that ability mercilessly.

It came to a head one day when Ari was over eight months along. The additions to the cottage were done, and furnished, and they'd started to settle once again into something of a true routine. A routine, Eliot knew, that would be disrupted the second the baby was born. He was enjoying the calm before the storm, though. He and Quentin had spent the night out on the daybed under the stars, naked but bundled up in their blankets, and the next morning, when he woke up hard with Quentin's ass pressed firmly against his groin, Eliot had very nearly given in to the temptation of fucking him out in the open like they used to do. Having Arielle around all the time hadn't slowed them down _much_, but it had slowed them down. Then again, it's not like it was anything Arielle hadn't already seen...

With that thought in mind, Eliot reached his hand down to cup Quentin's cock, rubbing himself forward into the swell of his ass to wake him up. Q made a happy, sleepy moan that made Eliot shiver, but after a few minutes of squirming together like that, Quentin came fully awake and froze, his hand coming down to tighten against Eliot's wrist. "El, we're outside."

"But I'm comfortable, and you're warm," Eliot protested, still pressing his hips forward. He was content in the kind of way that made him want to just burrow inside of Quentin and never leave, get in him and stop moving, make them both wait on the edge for as long as they could stand. He jerked forward a little harder into Quentin at the thought, his cock slipping between his ass cheeks.

"Fuck," Quentin said, pushing back like he couldn't stop himself. "Let's go inside."

"That feels like a lot of effort when you're right _here_, all warm and ready for me," Eliot said, mouthing at the shell of Quentin's ear. As he'd known would happen, Quentin went limp, his head rolling back into the pressure of Eliot's lips.

"You're a terrible influence," Quentin gasped, and Eliot smiled, pleased, returning his hand to Quentin's cock, relishing in the feeling of it filling against his palm.

But then -

"If you two are fucking out here, can you hurry it along?" Arielle said, waddling outside. "I could use some help with breakfast."

Eliot was almost tempted to keep going anyway, but Quentin sighed and pulled away from him, sitting up in the bed with his feet dangling over the edge. "Good morning, Ari," Q said, sheepish.

Eliot laughed at them both and flopped back down with his head against the pillow, trying to will himself into a less amorous state of mind. Jesus, he loved Ari, but lately her pregnancy hormones had given her some evil, sadistic sixth sense about when the two of them were getting hot and heavy, and she seemed to delight in interrupting. Or maybe Eliot was projecting because he was horny. Whatever.

"I'll be up in a minute," he said, tilting his head backwards to look at Arielle upside-down as she walked further into the yard towards the bed.

"Looks like you're already _up_," Arielle said. Evilly. Maybe it was a 'misery loves company' thing; she said she felt too gross and bloated for sex, but Eliot bet a few good orgasms would put her in a better state of mind.

He was just considering offering her a helping hand, so to speak, when they heard the sound of wheels clattering down the road. He decided to take pity on Quentin and Arielle's propriety, and rushed into the cottage with Quentin so that the two of them were fully dressed by the time Doady arrived with his cart full of his usual deliveries.

Quentin went inside to help Arielle with the food, leaving Eliot to assist Doady with unloading the cart. They had been ordering from him a lot recently, and always seemed to think of something else they desperately needed only after he'd already driven away. As they worked, Eliot was wracking his brains trying to remember if there was anything they'd needed to ask for -

"Oh, Doady, next time you come through, do you think you could find some stools?"

"Short ones, for milking cows? Or bigger, for sitting at tables?"

"Short," Eliot said. Ari hadn't been able to help much with the mosaic at all recently, given that lowering herself to the ground and getting back up again had ceased to be a one person job, and neither Quentin nor Eliot would let her anywhere near the ladder. But low stools were practical for more than just the extremely pregnant among them.

"I'll add it to the list," Doady said, handing down a sack of potatoes from the cart. They'd started to grow some of their own at the cottage, but they hadn't started coming in yet. Eliot turned to haul the sack towards the cottage, and saw Ari and Q emerge carrying plates and platters of food for breakfast. Quentin was telling Arielle some story about Margo and Eliot in the Brakebills days, and Eliot smiled at his animated voice, the way he almost couldn't stop himself from gesturing with his hands even when he was holding things in them.

He looked back to Doady to see that he was smiling in their direction too. "That's going to be one cute kid," he observed in an undertone, and when Eliot looked over at them it was to see Quentin taking a plate piled high with bacon out of Arielle's hand, as he tilted his head low and addressed a comment directly to her belly. Snatches of the story carried over to Doady and Eliot -

_"And then, little one, your Aunt Margo said that anyone caught doing homework in the whole cottage was going to be banished forthwith, and when one kid didn't listen to her, she sneaked into his room and turned all of his pillows into ice cubes!"_

Eliot snorted, remembering Margo's antics with the usual complicated cocktail of fondness and pain. Quentin had taken to narrating his and Eliot's entire life story to the unborn baby (and Arielle, too, who Eliot was convinced only half-believed a word they told her about Earth). It was sweet.

"I'm happy for those two, they'll be great parents. They look good together, don't they?" Doady continued, and the peaceful fondness in Eliot's chest cracked and warped. Quentin and Arielle had finished setting out the food and were going back inside, probably to grab the last few things. Quentin put a casual hand on Ari's lower back to guide her through the door.

The thing was - they _did_ look good together. If Doady hadn't been there watching them too, Eliot would have smiled, would have been proud and pleased at the sight of them. He'd have gone over to kiss them both, just because he could. But instead, he felt the cold ball in the pit of his stomach, usually dormant, radiate outward and down every one of his limbs. He frowned, looking away from the doorway where Quentin and Arielle had just vanished.

"Um, are you okay, Eliot?" Doady asked, his eyebrows scrunched together. The answer was _no_, but it was really none of this kid's business.

"Yeah, I'm good. Getting pretty anxious for baby day, that's all."

Doady's concerned expression smoothed out immediately, a big smile growing on his face. "I bet!"

After Doady had finished unloading the foodstuffs and extra linens they'd ordered, he stayed for a quick breakfast, during which Eliot tried to cajole himself back into a good mood, all while steadfastly ignoring the twin looks of curiosity from Quentin and Arielle across the table. When Doady was gone, Eliot made his way to the mosaic, but he wasn't surprised when Quentin put a hand on his arm, stilling him. He'd never been able to get away with anything, where he was concerned.

"You want to tell me what's going on?" he asked, his voice low.

"Not particularly," Eliot said, his eyes skittering over the various stacks of tiles around him, so he didn't have to look at Quentin.

"El."

"I think I'm just restless," he said, and made himself relax enough to turn to his partner, kissing him on the temple, then the tip of his nose. "I think maybe I need to go for a walk."

They'd all been doing that a bit more than they used to. Three was a crowd sometimes when living in such close quarters, and everyone needed space once in a while. It wasn't uncommon for Eliot to come back from the river after bathing to find that Quentin had wandered off for some peace and quiet, and he too treasured the rare moments of solitude among the trees. Still, he wasn't at all sure he'd been convincing on this occasion, as he waved a quick goodbye to Ari and set off into the woods.

He could feel the burn of Quentin's eyes on the back of his neck as he left, but he didn't turn back. What was he supposed to say? There wasn't really anything they could do to change the situation. Eliot didn't _want_ Quentin and Arielle to - separate, or whatever. He just needed to figure out how to smother the possessive itch in his fingertips whenever outside eyes made assumptions about who Quentin really belonged to.

_Belonged _to. What the fuck. As Eliot marched his way through the familiar wood-paths, not straying too far from home, he kept replaying that moment the night before the wedding in his head. Quentin had said he was _Eliot's_, that they belonged to one another. He'd needed to hear it like he needed air to breathe, and that need had scared the hell out of him. Because that wasn't who he was. He wasn't the jealous type. He seriously, honestly, didn't resent Ari or her relationship with Quentin. Hell, even if Quentin _was_ in love with her, it wouldn't bother him, as long it was an 'and' situation, not 'instead of.' Polyamory was fine. Polyamory was _great_. But that wasn't even the point, the _point_ was -

There was no point. Eliot was getting him worked up over outsider's perceptions, like anything mattered but what he, Ari, and Quentin all knew to be true. They were a _family, _all of them together. He wasn't the odd one out. They were equals. They had already _been_ equals before Ari was pregnant, when they'd fallen occasionally into bed together, Eliot kissing Quentin sloppy and deep while Ari sucked on his cock, or when Quentin was inside of her while Eliot was inside of _him_. And now, even with the inevitable shifting of their various relationships, they were still equals. They were equals when they bickered over furniture arrangements in the baby's new room, when they decided and then went back on dozens of different ideas for baby names, when the three of them cooled off from home improvements by working out a mosaic pattern, a habit by now that none of them expected to yield fruit.

And then they also weren't equals. Each relationship in their odd little triad was different. Eliot and Quentin were in love with each other, and they were going to spend the rest of their lives as partners. Some day, if Ari wanted, she might find someone else, and that would be _great_, as long as whoever it was could get on board with the unconventional family he would be walking into. If they could just exist in the bubble, go back to being _turtles_, as Quentin had once described it, then Eliot could have honestly said he'd never been happier.

And then Doady stopped by, or Ari's cousin Ona came for a visit with a whole box full of hand-made baby clothes, and Eliot stood paralyzed as these _outsiders_ coo'd over Arielle's stomach, smiling widely at the _happy couple_, and -

"Eliot," a deep, grumbling voice said from the shadows, and Eliot jumped, startled, before he recognized Ostrich's voice and saw the great brown bear lumbering forward. "You seem troubled, my little friend."

A pep-talk from a perpetual bachelor was perhaps the last thing Eliot needed right now, but he also didn't feel like being rude to anyone else that day, so he followed Ostrich back to his cave and accepted a cup of tea (that he had to make himself) before settling down outside the cave entrance for a chat. Ostrich was an interesting conversationalist. He somehow managed to be charismatic even through his bluntness, and Eliot was often grateful for his friend's ability to cut through the crap and tell the truth.

"You are troubled, Quentin is troubled," Ostrich said, without preamble, nodding his big head slowly as he settled himself against a tree trunk. He didn't use chairs, but he had one set out for human guests.

"Quentin's not troubled," Eliot said automatically. Then he blinked and shook his head, taking a sip of his tea. It burned his tongue. "I mean - what do you mean, troubled?"

"He goes on many walks," Ostrich said sagely. "Frowning. Troubled."

"Did he - tell you something was bothering him?" Eliot asked, trying to mask his impatience. His mind had just started to race, though, and the sick feeling that had been growing within him all day began to turn into queasy guilt. Obviously Quentin had been worried about him; he'd been able to sense Eliot's mood fluctuations over the past few months. But could it be more than that?

"He talks to me over tea," Ostrich continued. "He says you are unhappy and he is a failure."

"What?"

"He can't fix you, so he is a failure," Ostrich repeated.

"Jesus."

"This is a name, yes? Quentin says this man's name, too. A friend of yours?"

"Huh? What - oh, Jesus? No, sorry, it's a saying where we're - um. From." Eliot shook his head, trying to clear it, then took a large gulp of tea. It was still slightly too hot. "He said he's a _failure_?" he repeated, trying to make sense of this.

Ostrich thought for a long moment, blinking his eyes and squirming his back up against the tree bark. "He says he fails you, he can't think how to help."

"But - that's not - it's not _his_ fault," Eliot sputtered.

Ostrich just looked at him, then shrugged. Or maybe he was just scratching his back. Did bears shrug? "I am just repeating what Quentin says to me."

"Nothing's wrong," Eliot said, his throat closing up slightly as the guilt swarmed upwards, choking him. "Not really. I mean, yeah, sometimes it's hard to - I mean things aren't always _perfect_, but that doesn't mean he's - I mean, he's the best part of my life. He makes me happier than anything. He knows that."

"Do you tell him this?" Ostrich inquired.

"Yes."

"Recently?"

"I - don't know. Yeah, recently enough."

"I do not have answers," Ostrich said. "I see you are sad, and Quentin is sad. I try to help. That's all."

Eliot tapped his fingers against the outside of his mug of tea, absentminded and heartsick all at once. Then he shook his head, snapping out of contemplation. "Sorry, Ostrich, I - need to go. Thanks for the tea." Ostrich wouldn't be offended by his abrupt departure, Eliot knew. Bears weren't really much for social niceties, and small-talk was a downright annoyance to most of them.

Eliot practically ran back to the cottage, the feeling of dread growing in his stomach. If his pissy little mood swings had been upsetting Quentin that much, why hadn't he said anything? He knew Quentin had been taking a lot of walks alone through the woods, which in the past had sometimes been a sign of a bad brain day, but he hadn't thought -

And that was just it, wasn't it? He hadn't _thought_. When Quentin said he had a headache last week, and stayed inside most of the day, was that actually a headache or was he stuck inside his own darkness, waiting for Eliot to notice? When he gave him that expression of concern and tried to talk to him, had he been doing that just because he was worried about Eliot, or had _Q_ needed to talk? Had he needed reassurance, that Eliot hadn't been giving him? They'd been happy these past few months, generally speaking, or at least Eliot had _thought_ they were. But what if... God, how badly had he been fucking this up?

Because of the path Eliot had taken, he came out of one of the footpaths around the back of the cottage, facing the new additions. They had a lot of their gardening supplies stacked up against the back of the house, and a few empty crates ready to be re-purposed as seating or storage. As he circled around the side of the cottage out towards the mosaic, he saw Ari and Quentin standing close together, Arielle rubbing a comforting hand along Quentin's arms. Eliot paused. He wasn't going to eavesdrop on them. That would be shitty, that would be -

"I'm just miserable knowing he's miserable," Quentin was saying, his voice weary.

"Is it me?" Ari asked, her tone similarly anxious.

"No," Quentin said at once. "No, it's - I don't know. I can't get him to talk to me. Most of the time he seems okay, but then - " Quentin shook his head, cutting himself off, and wrapped his arms around his stomach. It was the clearest sign that he was feeling like shit, and Eliot was nearly lightheaded with guilt.

"Q," he said, coming forward. They both jumped apart guiltily, turning to look at them. "Q, can I talk to you?"

Arielle looked between the two of them for a moment, and then came forward to squeeze Eliot's arm once. "I'll go inside, it's probably a good idea for me to sit down for a bit."

And then they were alone. Quentin was looking at him, anxious and uncertain, and Eliot found himself completely at a loss for what to say.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

For several months after his wedding, the excitement of preparation and anticipation was enough to propel Quentin through his usual soup of anxieties and depressive doubts. There was just too much to think about - expanding the cottage, baby-proofing, thinking of names, taking care of Ari during her morning sickness. But after a while, things started to settle into something of a new routine, with Arielle around more and more as her room was built. And when things had started to calm down enough for Quentin to think, he could feel his emotional state shifting into uncertainty, in contrast to the world steadying around him.

One morning, he thought very seriously about not getting out of bed. He made himself do it, made himself smile tiredly at Eliot and Arielle and make excuses for the circles under his eyes as he went about his ordinary routines. The next morning he feigned a headache and refused to let Eliot stay with him inside, half relieved and half disappointed when neither of his future co-parents tried to bully him out of the cottage.

Sometimes, when his depression reared its ugly head, it was formless and unspecific and the world seemed pointless for no particular reason whatsoever. It wasn't something he could catalog, wasn't something that followed logically from the events of his life. But sometimes, it was all too easy to determine the trigger for a depressive state. He'd been riding the energy of Arielle's pregnancy for months, but as the day he would become a father came closer and closer, he could feel something slipping and shifting between himself and Eliot. It wasn't major - Eliot was still there, still cracking jokes and holding him close every night, still helping Ari through the mood-swings of pregnancy with a grace and patience that Quentin envied. He seemed to be as happy as Quentin was himself, but then sometimes, without warning, his mood would shift and he'd get distant and cold.

For the first time in their relationship, Eliot wasn't talking to Quentin about what was wrong. Q had been pleasantly surprised to find, in their early days, that Eliot's refusal to self-sabotage meant that even when things started to turn sour, he would always address it openly with Quentin, so they could air out any tensions or resentments between them before they started to fester. The fact that he _wasn't_ doing that this time was a bigger cause for concern than anything else.

On one day, when Eliot had wandered off in the woods, ostensibly to stew in whatever was bothering him, Arielle had asked him what was wrong. He hadn't discussed it with her, because it felt almost like a betrayal of Eliot to do so. Arielle was his wife, but even so - he'd never talked over problems in his relationship with anyone else before.

And then Eliot had caught them talking about him. As Arielle walked slowly away, practically waddling under the weight of a nearly full-term pregnancy, Quentin was left staring up at Eliot, whose expression was stony. Quentin felt more nervous around him than he maybe ever had, and he hated it.

"El, I'm sorry," Quentin said. He had to fill the silence. "God, I was just - I don't know, you wouldn't talk to me, and I've been so miserable, thinking that you - "

"Don't," Eliot said. He sounded angry, but Quentin couldn't tell how much. He clenched his jaw and looked away for a moment, before turning back to meet Quentin's eyes straight-on. "I fucked up. I fucked up. I'm the one who's sorry."

"I - what?"

"I love you. I love Ari. I'm not unhappy, Q, I'm an _idiot_."

"But - "

"Can I touch you?" Eliot asked, and Quentin blinked at him, because - what the fuck kind of question was that? Since when had Eliot ever needed to ask? Then Quentin studied Eliot's face, and saw that underneath the visible anger (addressed inward, he now realized), there was a heartbreaking uncertainty, a timidity that Quentin rushed to dispel.

"Yeah, come here," he said, stepping forward and folding himself into Eliot's arm. He heard a huff of relief against his hair, and squeezed tighter. "El, please talk to me, okay? Please just tell me."

"It's like I'm in this bubble," Eliot said softly, his temple pressed against the top of Quentin's head. "And in the bubble, I'm happy. Happier than I ever thought was possible. And then someone comes by and pops the bubble."

Quentin thought about this for a moment, turning his face into Eliot's chest and kissing the inch of skin just above his shirt collar. "Doady? Did he say something to piss you off?"

"I don't know if I'd put it like that, exactly. He said you and Ari looked good together."

Quentin went still, stopping the motion of his lips. "But, El - "

"No, I know," Eliot said. "I _know_. And I know that _you_ know, and _Ari_ knows, but everybody else thinks - I mean, why wouldn't they? It know it shouldn't bother me."

Quentin should have been relieved, but as this piece of information sunk in, he just felt worse. Because this wasn't exactly something he could fix. People would come by, and people would make assumptions. Short of posting a sign, or something, there wasn't really any way of stopping it. "Eliot. El, I love you, I don't - I don't know what more I can say."

"I know," Eliot said. "I've been a dick about this. I didn't want to tell you because there's not anything you can do to change it."

Quentin pulled away slightly, staring up at him. "There has to be something, El. Just tell me and I'll do it. I'll correct people if they assume, I'll - we can tell Ari's whole family, you know I don't care what anyone thinks, we didn't do this for _perception_, we did it for legal reasons, I'm not _hiding_ you. And if we tell people - "

Eliot kissed him to shut him up, and Quentin melted into it, relieved beyond measure at the gentle affection of the touch. "Q, baby. It's okay. _Really_. I'll get over it, I'm just being stupid."

"No, you're not," Quentin said. "You're hurting. You're hurting, and I can't fix it." It was pretty much the worst feeling in the world. Eliot let out a small sound of distress and pulled him back in, crushing them tight to one another.

"And now I'm hurting _you_ by telling you that I'm hurting, so..."

"I'd rather know," Quentin said quickly. "I'd rather know what's going on than be kept in the dark. You knowthat."

"We're quite the pair, aren't we?" Eliot sighed, and Quentin felt him start to sway, rocking them back and forth. Over Eliot's shoulder he could see an unfinished mosaic pattern, started the night before and still untouched that morning.

Quentin thought about tugging Eliot down to kiss him again. Ari was probably resting in her own room; they could go inside and lose themselves in one another, he could put all his energy into making Eliot forget his hurt, at least for the moment. He could seal the bubble back up around them, keep Eliot safe and content inside the cocoon of their family. He nosed his way up the column of Eliot's neck, heading for his lips, when -

"Um. Guys?" Ari's voice, from the doorway. She sounded brittle and uncertain. Eliot realized what this could mean before Quentin did, immediately stepping away and rushing towards Arielle. Quentin's brain caught up a second later.

"Ari? You okay?"

"Depends on. Your definition?" Arielle said, her breathing coming out in thin gasps between the words. "I think - the baby's coming."

* * *

Quentin didn't believe in love at first sight. He believed in _love_ of course, and he was the kind of person who fell in love easily. He'd fallen in love with Julia, even though he'd later realized a lot of his emotions were projections and dependencies on the one true friend he'd had growing up through his darkest days. He'd fallen for Alice quickly too. Attracted to her body and her brain from the start, by the time they'd returned from Brakebills South he'd been fully convinced that she was the one. And Eliot - well, his infatuation with Eliot had been immediate, of course, and looking back, he'd probably been a little bit in love with him before their disastrous threesome with Margo had even happened. There had been others, interspersed through his high school and college years, names and faces that seemed irrelevant now, people he'd adored for the erroneous belief that they could _save_ him, somehow. But he'd loved them, certainly - at least as beast as he was able at the time.

The point was, love at first sight wasn't real. You had to know a person to love them, or at least you had to _think_ you knew them. What he'd built over time with Eliot was so much more precious than an instantaneous attraction, an ephemeral connection built from hormones and instinct and nothing more.

"Come hold him," Arielle said, her voice cracked with exhaustion, and the midwife held out the bundle of blankets towards Quentin. He had been squeezing Eliot's hand hard enough that when he let go, he had to flex his fingers for a moment to get the blood flowing again. He approached and took the bundle in his arms. He looked down at his son, red-faced and wrinkled, eyes shut and mouth open, a squirming bundle of flesh and blood and _life _that came from his own body.

And he fell in love.


	7. Chapter Seven - In Which Parenthood Changes Some Things, and Not Others

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to do my final read-through of this chapter last night, so you get an earlier posting today than usual!
> 
> Also, this chapter is... porn. It's pretty much just porn.
> 
> Next week a thing will happen that will kick off The Plot in a big, major way, and I hope that you all are on board as I start to veer wildly away from anything even tangentially implied by canon. I can't wait to share it with you!

**ELIOT**

The baby was definitely Quentin's.

Teddy Coldwater-Waugh was Eliot's son too, of course, in every way that really counted. But one look at those big brown eyes and it was clear as day which particular genetic components were at play in the making of this tiny little miracle. He was also so goddamn adorable and perfect that Eliot didn't really have room inside of him anymore to be upset about whatever bullshit had mattered so much to him before he'd had a son.

Well. Maybe that wasn't entirely fair. Problems didn't just vanish in a puff of smoke, after all, no matter how much he might wish they did. But honestly, in the weeks and months after Teddy was born, he was too exhausted to be upset if visitors to the cottage made assumptions about the relationships between Teddy's three parents. And Quentin, bless his exhausted little heart, was very firm about the whole "three parents" thing, no matter how confusing it was to some of the visitors to be suddenly and viciously corrected after a simple inquiry after the new mother and father. Quentin took care of him. Arielle took care of him. They all took care of each other, and they all took care of Teddy.

And Eliot wasn't scared of fucking it up. Or, at least not as scared as he'd thought he might be, when the day finally came. In truth, he just loved Teddy so much that no sacrifice seemed too extreme - he couldn't hurt the tiny little guy. He wouldn't. He'd rather rip his own heart straight out of his chest.

By the time Teddy was four months old and they'd settled into as much of a routine as one can possibly be said to have when caring for a newborn, Eliot's anxiety over his role in their family had all but vanished. The panicked angst of the months before had shifted into a still-present but mercifully brief twinge of annoyance when and if any of Arielle's family or their circle of friends and acquaintances still cut him out of basic acknowledgment. And Q, like a hawk, made sure to check in with him when and if these moments of annoyance occurred.

Honestly, the biggest problem he was facing nowadays was exhaustion-plus-horniness. He was tired all of the fucking time, because even with three parents apparently a baby is a fuckton of work, and also the baby was _always there all the time_, and Quentin and Eliot had been reduced to stealing moments of privacy when they could. That is, when they were both awake enough for more than a couple minutes of sloppy kisses in bed as they drifted off into a state of rare and coveted slumber.

Despite all of this, life was a goddamn joy, every single day.

On one particular mid-morning, Eliot found Arielle in the nursery, sitting on a chair with little Teddy slurping away at his breakfast. He'd come in from the mosaic, leaving Quentin to work. Eliot had meant only to poke his head in to see if Ari or the baby needed anything, but the sight of the little domestic scene caught at something sentimental in his throat, and he found himself leaning against the doorjamb, just watching for a moment as Arielle cradled the baby to her chest.

"Damn, Ari," Eliot whispered, feeling more love in his heart than he knew what to do with. "I can't let Q see you like this, or he's finally going to declare his passionate love and leave me in the dust."

Arielle looked up at him, exasperation warring with fondness in her eyes. Teddy made a small smacking noise and fell off of her nipple, breakfast time over. "Don't let Quentin hear you making jokes like that, he hates yourwhole _my-partner's-going-to-leave-me-for-his-wife_ routine."

Eliot came over and reached out for the baby on instinct as Arielle lifted the drowsy little fellow off of her shoulder. He brought Teddy up and thumped him on the back, a light rhythm that soothed the squirming child into near-slumber against his shoulder. "I like riling him up," Eliot said honestly. "Truth be told, there was a time when I wouldn't have been able to joke about shit like that, about Q not wanting me. But I think the fact that Quentin didn't fall in love with _you_ has made me pretty convinced I don't have anything to worry about, no matter the competition."

Arielle twisted her mouth in a skeptical sort of way.

"I mean it, Arielle. You're like the world's most perfect woman, so - "

"You're only saying that because I'm the mother of your son."

"Uh, yeah," Eliot said, coming to sit next to her on the bench. He leaned forward so the baby was cushioned between them, and gave her a warm kiss on the temple. "Thereby making you the world's most perfect woman. Obviously."

"I'll share the title with Teddy's Aunt Margo. Sound fair?"

Eliot's heart did its usual twisting routine when he thought about Margo, the details of her face sometimes hard to recall with exactness. "Definitely fair," he agreed, kissing her again and then tilting down to kiss Teddy on top of his fuzzy little head.

"Are you guys auditioning for some sort of Most Adorable Tableau award?" Quentin asked, coming into the nursery and folding his arms. His hair was loose from its ponytail, cascading around his shoulders, in a way that always made Eliot itch to get his fingers tangled in it.

"What says the esteemed panelist?" Eliot asked, as Arielle leaned her head against Eliot so their temples touched, Teddy sleeping and snuffling against both of their shoulders at once.

"Oh, holy shit," Quentin said. "Ten out of ten." He came over and kissed Arielle lightly on the cheek, Eliot much _less_ lightly on the mouth, and then Teddy on the top of his sleeping little head. "But that's no excuse for bailing on work," he continued, shooting a mock-stern glare at Eliot. "You said you were going inside to get water."

Eliot sighed, shifting the baby back into Arielle's arms and standing, wrapping an arm automatically around Quentin. "Ever the task master, my darling Q."

They left Arielle cradling the sleeping baby and made their way back out to the mosaic, where Quentin treated him to a filthier version of the kiss he'd given him inside. Eliot tilted into him, running his hands down the lean muscles of Quentin's arms, and then back up to twirl strands of Quentin's hair around his fingers. He hummed into the kiss and Quentin let out a soft little moan of reluctance as he pulled away, reaching up to disentangle Eliot's hands from his hair. "We should work," he whispered.

"I miss you," Eliot said, somewhat nonsensically. Quentin had just disconnected his brain-to-mouth filter again.

"I'm right here," Quentin said, but he didn't laugh at him. He blinked a couple of times at Eliot, like a contented cat, and then grinned. "Remember, Ari's taking the baby to visit her parents this weekend."

"Like I could forget," Eliot scoffed, leaning in to kiss Quentin again, slow with promise. "I'm going to miss the fuck out of our son, but I'll admit I'm looking forward - "

"God, me too," Quentin said. "I need more than ten uninterrupted minutes with you."

"Well, the baby's asleep now, and Ari's inside..." Eliot said, waggling his eyebrows. He leaned down to bite Quentin's lower lip.

"Are you trying to entice me into a quickie?" Quentin said, mock scandalized. "Don't I deserve a little _romancing_?"

(Eliot thought about reminding Quentin about yesterday morning, when he'd woken up with Quentin on top of him, already opened up and impaling himself on Eliot before he'd even come fully awake. Quentin had put a hand over his mouth to stop him from crying out, and neither of them had lasted longer than a couple of desperate, sweaty minutes.)

Instead, he leaned forward to lick at the spot on Quentin's lip that he'd just bitten. "The minute we're alone, Q - really, truly alone? I'm going to romance your _brains_ out. I'm going to romance you so hard you'll see stars." Then he chuckled, taking a step away from Quentin with the greatest reluctance. "But you're right, we've got work to do. And anyway, you're terrible at keeping quiet. I don't want to traumatize our son by waking him up from his peaceful slumber with all of your carrying on."

"Our _son_," Quentin repeated, completely ignoring his banter and taking a step back towards Eliot like he couldn't help himself. "Holy shit, El."

"We're_ dads_," Eliot said, giggling. "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard."

And since he was suddenly close enough again, Eliot kissed Quentin once more, just for good measure. Quentin untied a leather strap from around his wrist and tied his hair up behind him into a bun, clapping his hands together and turning around in a circle to view their progress on the day's mosaic pattern. "We're going to be really good at this," Quentin declared confidently. And Eliot knew he wasn't talking about the puzzle.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Quentin wouldn't have thought that planning sex could be sexy, but in the days leading up to Ari and Teddy's departure for the farm, he and Eliot had started discussing what they wanted to do to each other when they finally had true privacy and a license to be as loud as they wanted. It had started as dirty-talk, Eliot growling out in his ear as they jerked each other off frantically down on the riverbank, racing to finish before they needed to head back home - _I'm going to make you scream, Q_, or _what if I tied you up and worked you over, got you hard and left you lying there, made you beg for me?_ And after a number of satisfying yet frustratingly brief encounters over the course of the week, the lewd suggestions had taken on a tenor of actual planning. There was a spell they'd tried before, but they'd never been able to use it to its full potential. Now, with all of the winding each other up they'd been doing, it seemed like the perfect grand finale.

It was an edging spell, essentially - each of them would cast it on the other, and then there was a simple tut to break it. Until the counter-spell was done, neither of them could come. Quentin could break his own spell at any time, but when they'd done this in the past, they'd only ever broken each other's holds, meaning they each controlled when the other was allowed to come. The power play part hadn't been the initial draw for Quentin, but they'd done it a few times now and he'd always felt an undeniable rush at making Eliot beg.

The first time they'd done this particular spell, they hadn't been able to maintain it for long, but they'd gotten better at managing physical responses over their years together. It was rare that they did sex magic of this intensity, because the experience was so physically and emotionally exhausting that it invariably took them both out for a full day afterwards, leaving them trembling and in need of constant touch. But this was a rare chance - Ari and Teddy would be away for three whole days, and there was no way in hell they were wasting their privacy on the mosaic.

"And the sensation sharing spell?" Eliot had offered one day when they were planning, making out like teenagers on the daybed while Arielle put Teddy down for his nap, and Quentin had had to remind himself that they were supposed to be working, and that he couldn't actually sink to his knees right there and - well. Anyway. They'd been getting pretty worked up for a while over this particular chance at alone-time. Every time he thought about the combination, of winding each other up and _feeling_ each other's pleasure all at once, it made him feverish.

By the time he and Eliot had kissed Arielle and the baby goodbye for their long weekend, he was practically trembling with anticipation, so much so that his feeling at his first parting from his son was a reasonable ache, and not an overwhelming tidal wave of grief. This, he considered, may have been part of Eliot's plan all along, but he couldn't really bring himself to care, not with the way that Eliot was already looking at him, hungry and hot, like he wanted to devour Quentin whole.

The day finally having arrived, they had every intention of taking their time. Eliot actually made them finish breakfast and drink water - _hydration is important, Q_ \- after Arielle and Teddy had left. He wouldn't even kiss Quentin until he was satisfied that he was well and nutritiously fed. Quentin feigned irritation, but he honestly loved it when Eliot coddled him like this. It made him feel safe, and also the suspense was kind of fucking incredible.

Once they'd each cast the edging spell and practiced dispelling it on each other and themselves, just to make sure nothing went wrong later on, they undressed and settled themselves down on the bed, the room lit only by the sliver of daylight coming in through the curtained windows. The trick with this kind of magic was not to rush it, to let it build gradually, and ride the ebb and flow of sensation. For a long time, therefore, Quentin and Eliot did nothing beyond touch and kiss each other, lying side by side and letting their hands wander, a leisurely pace interrupted at regular intervals for conversation. They discussed the schedule for trips into town, a new storage system for keeping failed mosaic pattern sketches organized, what they wanted to eat for dinner. Later, the conversation shifted to something sillier, Eliot challenging Quentin to recount the plot to various movies he'd seen back on Earth, while Quentin laughed at Eliot for missing out on so many cultural touchstones (_say what you want, El, _Star Trek_ was an important show not only in defining the genre but also in bringing the conversation of media representation into the forefront of the discussion in Hollywood_...)

And all the while, as they talked, and Eliot dedicated himself to sucking slow bruises into Quentin's neck, and Quentin traced his fingers up and down each bump of Eliot's spine, memorizing the feel. The knowledge that the glowing pleasure pulsing in each of them had no outlet for release made _everything_ feel sharper, more intense.

The ramp-up happened so gradually that Quentin had hardly been aware of it, but at some point they'd shifted from lying side-by-side and making out ferociously, to Eliot lying on _top_ of him, making out ferociously. They were both fully hard by now, and Eliot was moving his hips in a delicious way, pushing the perfect amount of friction against Quentin's cock. It felt _heavenly_, and Quentin let himself sink into the feel of it, letting the need grow sharper and sharper until he knew he was right on the edge, knew that if he hadn't had magic holding him back, he would already have come.

He groaned, relishing the freedom of being _loud_, and the sound made Eliot rut into him faster, his breathing going sharp. "You feel amazing," Eliot said, licking at Quentin's neck.

"I'm right there," Quentin said, lifting his hips up into Eliot. He chased the edge of orgasm for as long as he could stand it and then pushed weakly on Eliot's arms. "Okay, stop, stop - "

Eliot shifted off of him immediately, and both of them lay there staring at each other, allowing their bodies to come down from the edge. "How many times do you think you could stand doing that?" Eliot asked him, a wicked glint in his eyes. "I'm feeling like record-setting."

Quentin laughed, a little pained. "Jesus. Um. I guess we'll have to find out, won't we?"

Sex with Eliot wasn't usually a competition, but today it felt a bit like it was. Eliot sucked his cock until Quentin was practically screaming, tugging hard at his hair and bowing up off the bed so hard that most of his weight was on the top of his head. And then Quentin returned the favor, made Eliot whimper and thrash, held his hips down to stop him from thrusting up, and then let his cock slip from his mouth only to move lower. He licked Eliot open, intending to flip him over and fuck him, but eventually a nearly incoherent Eliot found the strength to flip Quentin onto his back instead and take control, sinking down onto him and then riding him right back to the edge for the third time, his own groans sounding pained and loud as he fucked himself down onto Quentin, chasing a release neither of them could achieve.

They'd been at it for what felt like hours - Quentin honestly couldn't have said how much of the day had passed - and he'd started to get past the point where he could form complex sentences, whimpering _please please El please_ into Eliot's neck as Eliot fucked him with three of his fingers. His cock was jerking and twitching against his stomach, precum leaking everywhere, and his vision kept blurring around the edge.

"Baby," Eliot said. "I'm going to - I'm gonna make you feel so good, okay? Will you let me - can I? Will you - oh _fuck_ Quentin, you're so gorgeous - "

Babbling Eliot was Quentin's favorite fucking thing in the universe, but the part of him that could still think actual thoughts wanted to push his partner one step further. Forcing himself to stop sinking down onto Eliot's perfect fingers, Quentin sat up, pulling on Eliot to position him how he wanted, until Eliot was sitting up and Quentin was in his lap. He'd purposefully maneuvered them so Eliot wasn't against the headboard, meaning he had to hold himself up and cradle Quentin to his body as well. Eliot loved feeling strong, like he was the one holding them together, and Quentin loved letting him have that level of physical control; he loved being cradled safe in Eliot's arms just as much as Eliot loved having him there. Quentin lined them up, squirming and rubbing up into Eliot's stomach, feeling Eliot's cock jerk and twitch in desperation back against his own. Quentin wrapped his arms tight around Eliot's back, lowered his lips to Eliot's ear, and forced himself to calm down enough to speak, as he began a slow, steady grind.

"Eliot," he said, low and intense. "You're taking such good care of me." Eliot moaned, moved faster. "You always take such good care of me. You know_ exactly_ what I need, you always do, you're the best I've ever had - "

"Oh, _fuck," _Eliot's hips were stuttering up in jerky, uncontrolled movements, and Quentin fought to control himself. He knew he could lift up and sink down onto Eliot's cock right now if he wanted to - he was definitely prepared for it - but then any hope he had of controlling the pace would fly out the window. So instead he just kept pressing them together, rubbing against one another, picking up the pace as he kept speaking:

"You have the most beautiful hands, I could stare at them all day. I look at you and I think about what your fingers feel like inside of me, or your hands holding my hips down when you fuck me. And your _mouth,_ El. Your _tongue_. God. Nobody's ever made me feel half as good as you do, every fucking day."

All perfectly true, and all designed to drive Eliot insane - he'd stopped babbling now, and instead had his head buried against Quentin's shoulder. He was thrusting up into him, hard, fast, desperate for the pressure, and was making repeated staccato moans, going higher and higher in pitch, directly into Quentin's skin. Just before Quentin had changed their positions, Eliot had been rubbing himself against the sheets and working himself to the edge while he fingered Q open, and now, with his cock straining against Quentin's stomach, Q knew that magic was the only thing that was preventing him from coming. Quentin kept up a litany of praise, making sure to let his own pleasure ring out as loudly and as often as possible. He waited, let Eliot keep chasing release, until he felt the warm saltiness of tears against his neck -

"You wanna come, El?" Quentin asked him, fighting to keep his voice low and gentle. "You feel so good, I want to feel you let go, I want to feel you come all over me. Come on, _please_ El, I want you - "

"_Fuck_," Eliot choked out again against his neck. He was thrusting forward like an animal now, lacking all semblance of rhythm.

Quentin brought one of the hands that had been tangled in Eliot's hair down, rested his fingers against center of his back, and twisted his fingers in the beginning of the tut -

"_Q_," Eliot gasped. "What - " Quentin felt him try to stop his body from moving, as he suddenly realized what Quentin was doing, but he was far past the point of slowing back down. Just as Quentin released the magical hold on Eliot, he started to come.

He bit down _hard_ on Quentin's shoulder, his fingernails biting into his back, but Quentin didn't mind - he felt a surge of renewed pleasure hit him, as he let himself remember his own need - Eliot's release was spilling up onto both of their stomachs and wetting Quentin's straining cock as well. It made every inch of his skin hot and tingly all at once. Eliot kept jerking into him, cursing and shouting, seeking something more - he shoved on Quentin's shoulders, sending him tumbling back against the bed on his back, and Eliot followed him down, covering him entirely with his shaking body, seeking out his mouth for a biting, bruising kiss.

He came for a long time, rutting against Quentin's stomach frantically, making high-pitched whines into Quentin's mouth as his come spurted up in ropes along both of their torsos. "Oh, fuck, _oh, fuck, Quentin." _Quentin couldn't believe how long his orgasm was lasting, how much he was coming, and felt his stomach clench in anticipation of his own turn. "You little shit," Eliot said, laughing as he finally started to come down from it, his hands shaking terribly as he tangled them in Quentin's hair. "I was going to - _fucking hell_ \- I was going to fuck you, I was going to drive you wild, I - "

"You can still drive me wild," Quentin said, breathless. He pushed up into Eliot, and Eliot let out another little moan mixed with laughter, his hips still stuttering in convulsive thrusts, moving through the aftershocks. Quentin was so hard it hurt, his cock jerking against his stomach, his balls drawn in tight. It seemed impossible to him that he hadn't already come, even with the magic in place to prevent it - surely one person couldn't _feel_ this much without release? He kept pressing up into Eliot, chasing the pleasure, the unbelievable torture of being perpetually right on the edge without being able to push over.

"Oh, I will," Eliot said, still breathless and shaking. "I'm going to make you lose your mind, darling." Quentin moaned in anticipation, his hands running down Eliot's back to cup his ass and push them together, smearing Eliot's release into their skin. Eliot laughed, a tinge of evil glee in the sound, even as his hips gave a few final involuntary stutters. "Oh, Q," Eliot said, dipping his head low to whisper directly in Quentin's ear. "You played yourself, baby - I'm not going to let you come until I'm inside you, and that means you've got to _wait_."

And then, he - pulled away. And got off the bed. And started to walk away, leaving Quentin lying there, hard, leaking, covered in come. "_El_," he called, frantic, disbelieving. "You can't - "

"Don't touch yourself," Eliot said, nearly snapping, and Quentin's hand, which he had indeed been bringing down towards his cock, froze on his stomach. "Just lay there and wait for me."

Oh, shit. Oh, _shit_. This was going to be goddamn torture.

Eliot didn't leave him for long, coming back quickly with a wet cloth. He leaned over the bed and wiped carefully at Quentin's stomach and chest, cleaning him off the old-fashioned way instead of spelling him dry. Every touch against his skin was making him jump, frantic and on edge. He tried to keep his breathing steady but it was impossible.

"Quentin," Eliot said, and his voice sounded serious. "Quentin, is this okay? Are you okay to keep going? Because - "

But Quentin was already nodding his head against the pillow, looking up at Eliot, feeling greedy and determined. He wanted this. He wanted to push himself, let Eliot take control. He trusted him. "I want you."

Eliot closed his eyes for a second and swallowed. "I - okay. I'm going to make this so good for you, Q." He leaned down and kissed him, keeping his body away from Quentin's. His hips twitched upwards, with nothing to rub against but air. "But you have to tell me," Eliot said against his lips. "You have to promise you'll tell me if it's too much."

Quentin nodded again. "Please touch me," he said, biting at Eliot's lower lip and tugging. He brought his hands up to grip at Eliot's hips, wanting to pull him back down on top, but Eliot held himself firm, hovering above him.

"I will. I'll touch you. I want - flip over, Q, I want to calm you down a little bit."

Quentin did as he was told, turning over onto his stomach and grinding himself down into the mattress immediately. "_Ungh_, oh, fuck, I'm so close, I want - I _need_ \- "

"Stop," Eliot commanded, and the sound of his _voice_ like that was just - _Jesus almighty Christ_ \- "Stop, Q, I mean it."

With herculean effort, Quentin stilled the frantic motion of his hips, feeling his cock trapped between his stomach and the sheets, throbbing with frustrated arousal. Eliot straddled him, his own soft cock resting against Quentin's lower back. Quentin gave another twitch forward, unable to stop himself, and then stilled when Eliot's hands smoothed over his back. "You're so beautiful," Eliot said softly, and he moved his hands up and down Quentin's spine, then up to his shoulders, the base of his neck, kneading with perfect pressure.

"Um. If this is supposed to be _calming me down_ \- " Quentin said desperately, his limbs shaking from the effort of holding still. He felt a single tear leak out of his eye.

"Hush," Eliot said. "I've got you."

It felt indescribably wonderful, especially when Eliot lifted his hands for a moment and then returned them to his back, now covered in a warm massage oil. Quentin focused on the feeling of those hands, the muscles pushing and pulling against the pressure of his palms. Gradually, he saw what Eliot meant - he was being eased back from the edge, the nearly painful need to come receding into something gentler, if no less pleasurable. He thought only about how Eliot was making him feel, how _good_ it was, as the tension drained out of him. He was still rock hard, and when he thought about it the desperation was there, waiting for him, but he could ignore it, box it off into another part of his mind. He had to wait for Eliot. He had to be patient. It would be fucking worth it.

After a while, Eliot slid down on top of him so he was blanketing him, and began to trace the same path with his lips and tongue that he'd just gone over with his hands. Eliot's breathing had gone a little shallow, and Quentin, with a jolt of eagerness, felt that he was starting to get hard again against his lower back. "Look at you," Eliot whispered, his lips soft against Quentin's spine. "God, look at you. How the fuck do I get to have this?"

"Mmm," Quentin said. "Feels good, El. So good."

Eliot laughed, a touch shaky. "I'm going to touch you, okay? Keep still."

Quentin's mind was fuzzy enough that he wasn't entirely sure what Eliot meant at first - he was _already_ touching him, his lips, his hands, tracing over every bit of skin. But then Eliot scooted back slightly so he was resting on Quentin's thighs, and one of his hands slid down lower. Quentin was still open and loose from earlier, so Eliot didn't bother to go slow, sticking two fingers into him immediately.

"Ah,_ fuck_," Quentin said. It was like he'd suddenly breached the surface of a pool of water - the languorous, muted pleasure he'd been floating in for the past several minutes turned sharp and hot all at once. He needed to thrust forward, get friction, but Eliot had told him not to - "_Fuckfuckfuck_, Eliot, _God_."

Eliot swirled his fingers with maddening precision around Quentin's prostate, and Quentin could feel himself crying freely now, the tears wet against his cheeks. "So good," Eliot whispered, and the praise was nearly as hot as what he was doing what his fingers. "So good for me, Q."

"Fuck me," Quentin said. "Fuck me, El, _please_."

"Jesus," Eliot said. "Okay, just - hold on, okay? Just - wait, Q, you're so good, you're so perfect." Eliot slid off of him and onto his side, keeping his fingers inside of Quentin, fucking slowly into him. He nudged at Quentin's shoulder with his nose until Quentin turned his head so they were face-to-face. Eliot brought their lips together, kissing him thorough and hungry. He shifted to move his hips closer, and pressed the length of his half-hard cock against Quentin's side, right along the side of his hip. He rolled forward into Quentin's side, slow and steady.

"I want you," Quentin said, past the point of finesse - he just wanted to feel Eliot filling him up, wanted that feeling of completeness that only he could give him. "Please, I can't - I _can't_ \- "

"Do we need to stop?" Eliot asked. His fingers were steady and the roll of his hips was consistent and slow, but his voice was wavering madly, and his breath was catching as he spoke right up against Quentin's lips. "If we need to stop - "

"_No_," Quentin said. "_Please_."

"I - " Eliot said, and for a moment he lost the rhythm, thrusting sloppily forward into Quentin's side. "Okay," he said, uncharacteristically lacking in eloquence. "Yes. Okay. Just. I will, just - turn - turn over for me, Q, I want to see your face."

Quentin squirmed over onto his back immediately, hands grasping impatiently for Eliot, one hand on his waist, the other ducking lower. Eliot moaned loud and deep when Quentin got a hand around him; his eyes flickered shut and his mouth dropped open as he thrust forward into Quentin's shaking, unsteady hand. "Now," Quentin said. "In me. Now."

Eliot hissed out a breath and opened his eyes with what looked like a lot of effort - he looked down at Quentin for a moment, his eyes catching on the tear-tracks rolling down his cheeks. He levered himself up and moved over on top of him, leaning down to lick at the tears. "Yeah," he said, dazed, and then, with Quentin's hand still on him, he lifted Quentin's legs, levered his hips upward, and lined himself up.

Eliot started slow, just pressing the tip inside, but Quentin - couldn't. He just _couldn't, _not anymore. He shoved his hips down hard, and Eliot slid all the way inside in one steady motion. They both cried out, and froze.

"_Jesus Christ_, Coldwater," Eliot said. "You're going to kill me."

"M-move," Quentin said, trembling. "El. Please."

And Eliot did. He seemed to have lost his own patience. Without further comment, he shifted Quentin slightly into a better position, holding his legs up, and started to fuck him, steady, deep, fast. The world narrowed to nothing but the feel of them, the thrilling sound of skin slapping against skin, the hoarse, unsteady breaths, whimpers from Quentin and stuttering, rambling words of encouragement and praise from Eliot. It couldn't last long for either of them at this point, Quentin knew - he wasn't getting much pressure on his cock this way, just the occasional press against Eliot's stomach as he thrust forward, but he wasn't sure if he would need it, once Eliot released him. He moved a hand down in between them as Eliot kept moving, his groans growing lower and more continuous. Quentin's own hand on himself felt so good it was immediately too much - after a few quick rough jerks he removed it, bunching his fists in the sheets instead and rolling his hips up to meet every one of Eliot's thrusts, wanting him deeper.

Time didn't really exist for Quentin anymore, but he doubted it had been more than a few minutes before Eliot's breathing changed, his pace accelerating. His eyes were blown wide and wondering. nostrils flaring, as he slammed in to Quentin, again and again.

"Q, I'm close, I'm close, I'm - gonna - "

Quentin couldn't speak, just gaped up at Eliot and tried to keep his own eyes open, but Eliot was still speaking, not his usual word-soup of sexual pleasure, but something with meaning and intention - he fought to hear him, to understand - " - the other spell, Q. Is that okay? Are we okay?"

Oh, _God_. Quentin had forgotten - the sensation sharing spell, a feedback loop that would link his own body up with Eliot's so they could share in each other's physical feeling. He nodded eagerly - his head felt like a bowling ball, so dense and heavy.

"_Q_," Eliot sobbed, his rhythm faltering. "_Q_ you're so perfect - okay, I'm - give me your hand - " they linked fingers and Eliot traced out the tuts with his other hand, the pace of his thrusts slowing down so he could concentrate, and then -

"_God. Fuck." _Quentin wasn't sure if it was himself or Eliot who had shouted out, but it didn't much matter anymore, because they were one and the same - he was still right on the edge, the sharp pain of prolonged and unfulfilled desperation making his heart beat fast and hot in his temples, but Eliot was _there with him_, and he could also feel the pressure and heat of a body squeezing around his cock, knew how close Eliot was because he could feel it like his own pleasure, and if he didn't come now he was going to literally, actually _die_ \- "Now. _Now_. _Please_."

He was gonna die, he was gonna die - "_Oh god oh god oh god_ \- " someone was chanting, and then Quentin felt it - Eliot had released him; he hadn't even felt his fingertips tracing out the spell against his skin. But he knew it must have happened because he -

He'd never felt anything like it. Eliot was everywhere - inside of him, around him, through him - and Quentin was inside of Eliot too, inside of the depth of him, the beating heart of who he was and what he felt. The relief was so overwhelming that it almost didn't even feel _good_, looping around past the point of regular pleasure and into something necessary, like a painful, tingling breath of air after near-drowning, like the first gulp of water after a drought. Everything and nothing. His vision blurred and bright spots appeared before his eyes. His ears stopped working, registering nothing more than the _whooshing_ sound of his own heartbeat, which had dropped from hummingbird-paced down to a lethargic, sated _thump_ as the waves and waves of tingling sensation rolled through him.

He thought he might be talking, making some sort of noise but he wasn't sure, he wasn't in conscious control of it - he could feel the press of skin against him, felt a trembling, jerking body moving against and inside of his own, or maybe it _was_ his body - it was all the same. He wasn't sure if he was even breathing anymore; couldn't hear or feel his lungs expanding and contracting. Did he need to breathe? Probably. Nothing mattered, nothing felt _real_, it was all too much and not enough, all at once, a never-ending and desperately perfect combination of emotion and sensation. He wanted to say something, but the only word his mind could conjure was _Eliot,_ just that over and over, the bright hot center of his universe. Again and again and again and -

And then, an infinity later - "Q," a voice, rough in his ear. A frantic, thready heartbeat pressed up against his side. Hands, trembling against his spine, holding two bodies tight together. "Q? Look at me, baby."

Quentin did, because Eliot sounded like he needed him to. He blinked up, and Eliot's face came into focus. "Hey," Quentin tried to say. It came out like mush. Eliot kissed him immediately, shuddering and gasping right into his mouth.

"Oh, God," Eliot said, against his lips. "Oh, _fuck_."

"Yeah." Still mostly mush. Quentin burrowed his head forward into Eliot's chest, seeking closeness. The sharing spell had ended too, he was almost certain; the soul-deep relief and satisfaction tingling along every one of his nerve endings seemed to be wholly his own. After a few moments, (or minutes, or hours, because who could tell, really?) Quentin tried to do the clean-up tuts, aware in an abstract sort of way that they were both covered in come and sweat, rapidly cooling against their overheated skin.

But his hands were shaking far too badly - he started once, twice, three times, and then Eliot, whose brain appeared to be on a significant delay, finally realized what he was doing and grabbed clumsily at Quentin's hand with both of his own, kissing along his knuckles. "It's okay, I - " Eliot said, his voice wrecked and warbling. "I've got it, Q, I'll do it." It took Eliot two tries as well, and once they were both dry and clean, neither moved for several minutes.

Quentin felt - blank, incapable of speech, equally incapable of closing his eyes and drifting off on the cloud of emotions enveloping them both. Eliot was doing something, moving his hands, talking, maybe, and it took Quentin an extraordinary effort to pull himself out of the haze and pay attention to him.

"Here, Q, drink this," he said. He was holding a pewter mug of water that he must have summoned using his telekinesis. He was still trying to take care of Quentin, even when barely able to control his own shaking limbs.

"Thank you," Quentin said, the first words intelligible words he'd managed, and then felt a twinge of guilt when he saw relief in Eliot's eyes.

"Are you okay?" Eliot asked, helping him tip the cup to his lips. "Did I - was that too much?"

Quentin shook his head. "No. Sorry, El, no, I'm good, I just - forgot how to talk, because. Um. _Holy shit_." There were still tears leaking out of his eyes. His limbs felt like rubber.

Eliot laughed weakly, and the cup floated a foot over to rest against the shelf next to the bed. Both of Eliot's still-trembling hands went back petting along Quentin's back, around to his sides and stomach, a vital, continuous touch. "Yeah, no kidding," Eliot said. "I've never felt - nothing's ever - " he coughed, trailing off. He sounded about as stunned as Quentin felt.

"Are _you_ okay?" Quentin remembered to ask, as the fatigue started to settle into his bones. He felt more than heard Eliot huff out a disbelieving breath, his lips pressed right up against Quentin's temple.

"I'm floating, Q. I love you so much."

"Mmm. Okay. That's good."

And he fell asleep to the sound of Eliot's elated, exhausted laugh against his ear.

* * *

Life continued.

Every parent they'd encountered during Arielle's pregnancy had assured them that children destroyed all sense of routine, and in many ways this was true. Teddy seemed to grow and change every day, to the point where Quentin was almost worried every time Ari took him to visit the farm, lest Teddy return to him an unrecognizable stranger. For the first months of his life, even with three parents to look after him, nobody managed to sleep through the night.

And this lack of routine was kind of a bitch, especially given Quentin's particular cocktail of mental issues. He wanted having a son to cure him - he wanted his love for Teddy to be so profound that he'd never fall in to that mindset of thinking that the entire world was pointless. He didn't want his kid to ever witness him staying in bed all day because of numbness so crippling that no amount of cajoling or forcing could entice him back to the land of the living. But parenthood wasn't a miracle cure any more than a loving, happy relationship had turned out to be. While he was in the fog, he could only be resentful of Arielle and Eliot's attempts to cheer him up or take care of him, but as always, once the worst had passed, he felt a strong mixture of gratitude and guilt well up inside of him.

"El," Quentin said, the first morning he'd managed to get up, bathe, and eat some breakfast after one of his spells. "I - "

"Will you hold Teddy for me?" Eliot asked, coming around the table and plopping the baby into Quentin's arms without waiting for an answer. "Baby spit-up does not match the color palette of today's _ensemble_." He smiled at him, kissed his temple, and then whisked away, effectively cutting off Quentin's apology. But he wasn't being dismissive - he was being _Eliot_, in the wonderful way that he always was, telling Quentin that any perceived insult was forgiven, that he was happy he was feeling better and trusted him to contribute.

Ari was a little different - this had been her first experience living with a Quentin Coldwater who was sullen and selfish and obviously _sick_ in some way, even if she'd been tangentially aware of his issues before. After Eliot had taken off to the river with a load of laundry that morning, he found Arielle stacking mosaic tiles, finishing up the clean-up from yesterday's last pattern. Teddy babbled happily at her as Quentin approached, and she looked up with an automatic smile on her face, one that faltered slightly when she saw that Quentin was the one approaching with her son.

"Hi, Quentin."

"Hey, Ari," he said. He came straight up to her and tilted Teddy slightly forward so that Arielle could give her offspring a kiss, keeping a firm grip around the squirming baby as he did so. "I owe you an apology."

She looked at him, wary. "I - I don't know that you do, Quentin. Eliot says you can't help it when you get sick like that - "

But Quentin shook his head. "I can't help it that I feel like utter crap sometimes. But that's not an excuse to be cruel to you. I know I must have scared you the past couple of days. I wish I could say it would never happen again, but I can't."

She studied him for a moment, absentmindedly offering the edge of a tile to Teddy, who slapped his hands against it and then tried to lift it up to put it in his mouth. Quentin leaned back to stop him from licking the puzzle piece. "Okay," Arielle said finally. "You're right, you did scare me. And thank you for apologizing. But we're going to be okay, right?"

"Always, Ari," Quentin said, smiling at her and taking a step forward. He kissed her on the forehead and she smiled back, holding out her hands for Teddy.

Life was hard, but it was also a goddamn joy, every single day.

* * *

One day, when Teddy was around eight months old, Arielle had walked into the bedroom while Eliot and Quentin were in the middle of sex. They'd been taking their chance at a few moments alone because Ari's cousin had been visiting, and the two women had been playing with the baby outside, sharing a picnic in the early afternoon sunshine. Q and Eliot had joined them for a while, and then with absolutely no subtlety, they'd headed inside, stripped down with efficiency, and climbed into bed together. They hadn't even worked themselves up to the actual fucking part, Quentin having gotten distracted just sitting on top of Eliot and kissing him for several long minutes, when Ari interrupted them. But she was alone, and instead of passing by and into her own room as she might usually have done, she paused, watching them long enough that Quentin had finally lifted his head from where he'd been sucking and biting at Eliot's nipples, turning to look at her. "Hey," he said, an eyebrow raised.

"Ona's taking Ted for a walk," Arielle said, still staring frankly at their naked bodies.

Eliot, breathing hard, fluttered his eyes over at Arielle, then back to Quentin, raising an eyebrow in turn. They both turned to look at her, and Quentin tilted his chin in invitation.

"We'll have to alter the protection spell," Eliot observed, as Arielle came over and crawled onto the bed beside them, pushing Quentin half off of Eliot and turning him over so she could clamber into Quentin's lap, still fully dressed. Quentin shivered at the slide of fabric against his naked flesh. "I don't want any more surprises."

"I think we got it perfect on our first try," Arielle agreed, laughing, and then she bent to kiss Quentin, while Eliot lifted a hand to brush the hair out of both of their faces, his thumb tracing lines against jawlines and cheekbones.

"We missed you," Eliot said to Arielle, pressing a kiss into her shoulder. And something that had ended started again, as miraculously simple as it ever had been.

* * *

For Teddy's first birthday they all visited the farm, beaming with pride as Arielle's extended family and other community members cooed over Teddy, declaring him to be a prodigy, ahead of his time in every way, something of which Quentin was already completely convinced. Eliot and Quentin introduced the Earth tradition of letting Teddy make an utter mess of himself with a birthday cake, and the rest of the day was spent basking in Teddy's happiness and indulging in conversation with other adults, all of whom were forced by circumstance to nod and listen while they talked endlessly about their son and nothing else.

Arnold the Eagle had been curious about Teddy, but luckily did not take offense when the birthday boy had taken one look at the giant bird and burst into frightened tears - Quentin had rushed forward and scooped him up, apologizing as he darted away, rocking the baby against his shoulder. Eliot had taken the opportunity to talk with Arnold, who had always fascinated him. As a telekinetic, he was always eager to discuss flying with anyone who could do it without magic.

Quentin was on the look-out for any strange looks or whispers, but the party really was mostly Arielle's family and a few trusted friends, and by this point everyone seemed to know to keep their mouths shut about their unconventional parenting situation. He was glad to see no sign of the darkness that sometimes enveloped Eliot when Arielle, Quentin, and Teddy were viewed as a nuclear family that didn't include him. It helped that Eliot was obviously besotted with his son, and was so clearly good with him - nobody witnessing the two of them together could have any doubts about Eliot's devotion as a parent.

"We really do wish you'd visit more often," Mrs. Ashmore said to Quentin, as she bounced the baby in her arms, making silly faces. "It's nice to see Arielle and my grandson, but she's always swinging by without her husband. One might get the wrong idea, dear."

Maybe he'd spoke too soon about the lack of probing comments. But Mrs. Ashmore had always been the most prim and proper of the lot. She was a kind woman, one who Quentin liked and was grateful for, but sometimes... "We'd love to visit more often," Quentin said. "But El and I have a project we're working on; it's not always easy to get away."

Mrs. Ashmore opened her mouth to say something, but then wisely chose to shut it, instead sticking her tongue out at Teddy and smiling in delight when he laughed. Quentin watched the happy grandma for a moment and then scanned the field for his wife and his partner. He found them together, talking with Ari's brother and his husband, casual and easy in the bright light of the day.

People would talk, people would wonder. Quentin really couldn't be bothered to give a damn. He was happy, and the people he loved most were happy, too. Life was a goddamn joy, every single day.

* * *

Teddy grew. He learned to walk and talk and argue in short order, and the joys of toddler-hood brought with them their own potent mix of fears and joys. There was the time when Teddy had wandered, knobbly-legged, a short way away from Quentin and Arielle when they were walking with him in the woods, and although he was only out of his direct sight for around twenty seconds, Quentin had honestly felt his entire life flash before his eyes. That day had also been the first time Ostrich and Teddy had met, and while Teddy was still afraid of Arnold and his kin, he seemed completely taken with the bear. The two became fast friends.

Teddy's three parents rotated watching the baby with work on the mosaic and trips into town, each of them getting in their fair share of parenting and the necessary _breaks_ from parenting that Quentin wasn't even ashamed to admit he needed sometimes. Becoming a father had changed everything for him, but he was still the same introvert he'd always been, and sometimes he needed to escape from everyone and everything to avoid crawling out of his own skin. Each of them coped with the difficulties of life in different ways, for the most part healthily.

This didn't mean there were no difficulties among them, of course, but having three parents seemed to make those difficulties less. Eliot mediated when Quentin and Ari fought, and Ari mediated when Eliot and Quentin fought, and Quentin - well, he was sure he would have been a perfectly fine mediator for Ari and El except for the fact that they _never_ fought, which was sometimes so annoying that Quentin just had to fight with both of them about _that_.

Quentin and Eliot told G-rated versions of their life's adventures to Teddy as bedtime stories, told him exaggerated tales of his Aunties Margo and Alice and Julia and Fen and even Kady, told him about his Grandpa Ted, the magical delights of Planet Earth, all of which sounded like nothing more than science fiction to a bemused Arielle and a wide-eyed Teddy. It didn't matter - the important part was that they weren't going to hide anything about who they were from their son. He would grow up knowing what his fathers had sacrificed, what and who they were fighting for every day.

And yet still, the mosaic never worked. Quentin had stopped the pretense that he _wanted_ it to work, admitting in his own mind that the life he had now was the one he wanted. But still, they kept at it, every day thinking of their friends back home, of a world without magic that they could not, _would_ _not_ abandon, no matter what. Even as the mosaic ceased to be Quentin's true priority, it continued to be a central aspect to all of their lives, a job they all shared.

As Teddy grew, he colored out sloppy abstract art in pastel colors, and they patterned mosaic attempts after his extraordinary vision - was there anything more beautiful than the confused scribbling of a toddler? ("Um, Q," Eliot said, when Quentin carefully pinned another one of Teddy's nonsensical whirls of color to the wall in the nursery, "just because he's our kid doesn't mean we have to pretend he's an artist"). Ari agreed with Eliot, but Quentin was charmed by every scribble that Teddy made. Because he'd help to make a person, and now that person was _making things_. For whatever stupid reason, the key quest didn't agree with Quentin's awed logic and the mosaic remained stubbornly unsolved when they tried Teddy's brilliant ideas.

And for years to come, life was a goddamn joy, every single day.


	8. Chapter Eight - In Which Arielle Has Big News

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited to share this chapter with you all!! It marks a huge turning point in the story. This chapter and next week's chapter are sort of the "transitional" sections, taking us from the first part of this story truly into the informal "Act Two," where things pick up and go in a completely odd-ball direction. Thanks for sticking along for the ride!

**ELIOT**

When Teddy was five years old, ("five-and-a-_half_" he insisted on saying whenever asked his age) Eliot had the quiet realization that he and Quentin been in Fillory for almost a decade. They had aged into their mid-thirties without much comment or fanfare, their lives narrowing in focus to their beautiful family and the never-ending task of the mosaic.

Eliot thought about Margo sometimes, but it wasn't every day anymore, and even the painful thoughts of a wife and child from another time had started to fade into the background. The most beautiful man in the world was madly in love with him for some reason, and they had a beautiful son and his beautiful mother, and a beautiful life -

"What are you thinking about?" Quentin asked, nudging Eliot's arm with a tile piece. Eliot looked over at him and took it, meeting Quentin's bemused expression. He had a feeling Q had been trying to hand him the tile for a minute there.

"How happy I am," he said, honestly. Quentin smiled, big and wide, but rolled his eyes too, as Eliot had known he would.

"You're a sap."

"Undoubtedly," he said, craning his neck backwards towards Quentin. His partner shuffled closer to him to kiss him upside down for a long moment. "Doesn't mean it's not true."

"I'm happy too," Quentin said simply, pecking him on the mouth once more before moving back to the puzzle. "Do you think Ari's happy?"

Eliot didn't need to ask what Quentin meant. Arielle had gone to visit the farm that weekend, leaving Teddy alone with his dads. She'd been doing that a lot recently. It wasn't that she'd never needed a break before, but it was a bit unusual for her to run off to the farm so many times in a row without Teddy or either of his dads accompanying her. He frowned, contemplating a stack of tiles and separating a few off the top, sliding them in Quentin's direction without looking. "I think she's happy," he said finally. "We haven't been neglecting her, have we?"

"Huh," Quentin said. "I don't _think_ so, but I guess it's been a couple of months since - " since they'd all fallen into bed together. Arielle usually dictated when she wanted them. It wasn't incredibly regular, but usually she approached them at least once or twice a month.

"Maybe she's sick of always initiating," Eliot said. "I was thinking about that the last time we were all together. I mean, we have each other. She doesn't have anyone who's just hers."

"But she doesn't want - you don't think she wants..." Eliot gave in to the urge to turn and look at Quentin, observing his contemplative frown. "Because I don't think _I_ want..."

"I don't know," Eliot said. "Maybe we should ask her."

"Yeah, we probably should."

"Can I do the puzzle?" Teddy said, running over from where he'd been finishing his breakfast at the table outside. He'd left his dirty plate out on the table, but Eliot didn't feel like ruining his happy, eager mood by reminding him to clean up after himself. As Teddy ran up and crashed into Quentin, who had opened his arms for a hug, Eliot tugged on the plate with his mind, sending it coasting through the air and through the open front door. His aim was never perfect when he couldn't see where he was moving things, but he was familiar enough with the interior of their home that he was pretty sure he'd landed the plate on the counter.

"Of course," Quentin said, in answer to Teddy's question. "Can you find me some more of the blue ones, like this?" He tapped at the tile in his hands, and Teddy set off obediently on his hunt.

"If we do it right, then I get to see Aunt Julia and have _pizza_," Teddy said happily, holding his hands out with a tile in each to Quentin, who took them with a smile of his own. Eliot's heart twisted in his chest. Thinking about the possibility of actually solving the mosaic was always terrifying, for myriad reasons. If they actually succeeded, they had no idea what would happen. Would they be able to open up a door and walk right back through to their own time? He could only pray they'd be allowed to bring Teddy and Ari with them. If not, they'd -

Eliot shook his head, dispelling the dark thoughts. Teddy knew, roughly, what was supposed to happen if they solved the mosaic, understood that his dads came from far away and that this task was their only chance of getting home. They'd gotten him excited at the prospect of going to Earth, but Eliot knew he was really too young to understand what it all meant. If they _did_ all go through back to Earth, back to their own time, then it was unlikely they'd ever be able to return. Ari and Teddy would be giving up everything to go with them. Eliot and Quentin would be giving up nine years of happiness here, a community and a routine they both depended on and enjoyed.

And so Eliot kept hoping they would fail, and kept pretending he wasn't hoping that at all.

"That's right," Quentin said, giving Eliot a knowing look as he answered his son. "Your Aunt Julia and I know the best place for pizza in all of New York."

"Don't listen to your dad, Teddy," Eliot said seriously. "He's not a sophisticate like I am. If you want the good stuff, you'll have to come out to eat with me and your Aunt Margo."

"Does Aunt Margo like pizza?"

Eliot bit back on a grin, and turned a despairing look towards Quentin. "The Coldwater genes have corrupted his palette already, Q. It's a tragedy for the ages."

"Hey, pizza's delicious, and also, he's _five_."

"And a half!" Teddy shrieked, jumping up and down and offering another set of tiles to Quentin.

"Thanks, sweetheart," Quentin said, accepting them. "Can you bring your papa some of the red ones?"

They continued that way for the rest of the morning, their conversation about Arielle's state of mind forgotten for now. Eliot hoped, he _really_ hoped, that Arielle wasn't dissatisfied with their life together. She knew full well that if she needed something more, she was free to go out and get it - but short of propositioning people in Langdale for a quick tryst, she didn't really have a lot of opportunity to meet new people. And yet, Eliot agreed with Quentin - he liked having Arielle in their bed, but only as a visitor. He couldn't imagine her there all the time, as much as he truly did love her.

That night, once Teddy had been tucked in and told his current favorite story for the millionth time (Brave Aunt Alice vs. The Beast (heavily, _heavily_, edited for content, of course), Eliot and Quentin climbed into bed, pleasantly tired from a day of work.

"We should invite her," Quentin said, lying on his side with an arm thrown over Eliot's waist. His lips were sucking and kissing down Eliot's neck, and it took a moment for Eliot's brain to focus on his words.

"Invite her?"

"Ari," Quentin said, his mouth skimming lower. "To bed with us, when she gets back."

"Oh. Okay," Eliot said, then gasped, pressing up into the pressure of Quentin's tongue against one of his nipples. "_More_."

Quentin laughed, his breath warm, and Eliot squirmed until he got back to work, moving his mouth from one nipple to the other, giving each his full and careful attention. For a while Eliot floated on the feeling, and then he tugged on Quentin's arm until Q shifted over and rested his full weight against Eliot, pressing them together, legs-hips-chest. "Hi there."

"Hi," Quentin said back, rolling his hips down. Eliot moaned, and Quentin shushed him. "He's asleep, we have to be quiet."

"Oh, _I_ can be quiet," Eliot whispered. "I think it's _you_ we need to be worried about." He pinched Quentin on the ass and then palmed him, pressing up with his hips as he did so. Quentin gave a gratifying little squeak and then glared at him.

"Is that a challenge?" he ducked his head to suck again against Eliot's pulse-point, which was just terribly unfair, and -

"Papa? Daddy?"

The sound of little footsteps pattered from a distance, and then they heard the door swing open. Quentin slipped off of him, flipping over to land on his back so they were lying side-by-side.

"You okay, little man?" Eliot asked, shooting a rueful look at Quentin, who was breathing hard.

"Uh huh. I have to pee."

"Not it," Eliot said quietly, poking Quentin in the side just as Teddy rounded the corner, his hair already mussed from sleep.

Quentin glared at him, very half-hearted, and got up, walking on wobbly legs over to their son. "I'll just wait here, then," Eliot called after them, cheerful.

"You might be waiting for a long time," Quentin replied, laughter in his voice. "I'm suddenly feeling _very_ sleepy. By the time I get back I'm sure I'll be ready to drift off."

_Empty fucking threat_, Eliot thought to himself happily as Quentin steered Teddy outdoors to the privy. And he lay there in the dark, his pulse pounding hard in his throat, while he waited for his partner to come back to bed.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Arielle arrived back at the cottage the following day just after noon. Teddy was helping with another mosaic puzzle, and saw her first - he shrieked _MOMMY_ pretty much directly into Quentin's ear and was off like a shot, still clutching one of the tiles in his hands. Eliot laughed at Quentin's wince and got up, offering him a hand and pulling him to his feet as well. Teddy was being kissed all over his cute little face by the time Quentin and Eliot reached them, and she tilted her head up with a grin to accept a quick peck on the lips from both of them.

It was a nice reunion, and it was always good to have Ari back home after she was away. But there was something definitely _off_ about her. Quentin had already been worried, what with all of her absences, and while he wanted to believe it was just the normal ebb and flow of life, a part of him was getting concerned that something more serious might be going on.

"Eliot made cider, it's not half bad," Quentin said to her, offering a tankard. They were out by the mosaic, and Eliot was inside setting Teddy up with some homework. It was taking longer than usual - he was all keyed up from the excitement of having his mother back. By his reaction you never would have believed she'd only been away for two nights.

Arielle took a sip of the cider, tilting her head in contemplation. "Not bad at all."

"I'm glad you're home, Ari," he said, and leaned to kiss her again. He was thinking about what he and Eliot had discussed, about her always initiating the physical aspects of their relationship. Ari accepted the kiss, but pulled away almost too fast, her face troubled, and Quentin frowned. "You want to tell me what's going on with you?"

She wobbled her head back and forth, an odd expression on her face. "Eh. Undecided."

"Ari."

"I'm okay, Quentin. Really. I'm glad I'm home too."

When Eliot came back outside, the three of them settled naturally into a rhythm, working on the mosaic for a while, enjoying the quiet now that Teddy was inside. Eliot and Quentin had a silent conversation over Arielle's head as she sorted tiles. She seemed distracted, a lot more muted than they would have expected her to be. She'd been exuberant when greeting Teddy, but there was clearly something on her mind, and it was up to them to coax it out.

"So fill us in, how's the farm?" Eliot asked, handing a stack of mosaic tiles to Arielle, who walked them over to Quentin's corner.

"Oh, you know."

"We don't, actually," Quentin prompted. "Is Ona still staying with your folks?"

Arielle nodded. "She's on bed-rest now, the new baby should be along any day."

"And did Jack and Leon ever find that missing sow? Last time I talked to them they were carrying on as if they were going to starve without it."

"A mountain lion got it," Arielle said, rueful. "But he was awfully apologetic about it later, came by and offered to heard a few wild hogs their direction for their trouble. I think Ma invited him to stay for tea."

Eliot looked at Quentin, and ticked an eyebrow up. He knew they were thinking the same thing. That sounded like a good story, the kind that Arielle normally would have embellished, maybe even acted out. She would have waited until Teddy was done with his schoolwork for the day, would have done imitations of Leon and Jack, and of the contrite mountain lion, prowling down from his nearby cave to offer payment in exchange for his untimely snack. Instead, Arielle presented the information in a matter-of-fact tone, sorting tiles into stacks without further detail.

"And Arnold?" Quentin asked, pointed. "The rest of his family? Have they been around much?"

"Oh, sure."

"Oh, sure?" Quentin repeated.

"I - " Arielle sighed, pausing in her sorting for a minute to meet Quentin's eyes. "I'm just a little tired, sorry. It's not anything serious. Maybe I'm just not in a chatty mood."

Quentin had never known Arielle to come home from a trip in anything other than a chatty mood. He and Eliot exchanged one more glance, and then Eliot nodded, decisive.

"Okay, that's it," Eliot said, slapping his knees and standing up, coming forward to Arielle and holding a hand down for her. "_Darling_. Please tell your adoring husband and besotted partner what's going on with you."

And to Quentin's alarm, Arielle burst into tears.

"_Ari_," he said, dropping the tiles in his hands and rushing forward, wrapping an arm around her. "Ari, what happened? What's wrong?"

Eliot pressed in close to her other side. "Is everyone okay? Are you okay?"

"I'm - I'm sorry, I just - "

"You're freaking us out," Quentin said, squeezing Arielle tighter. His mind was racing. Was someone sick or dying? Was it her parents? Was it _her_?

"Oh, no. No, no, I'm _sorry_, everything's fine," Arielle said, but she was still crying.

"Here, come on, let's sit down," Eliot said, and, with a hand on each of them, he steered them over to the bench. Quentin had a vivid flashback of a time six years previously, when they'd sat this way with Ari in the middle, and she'd announced that she was having a baby.

For a long moment they sat in silence, while Ari sniffled and brought herself back into a state of calm.

"So," she said finally. She turned to face Quentin head on. "So. I think I have to divorce you."

Quentin's initial reaction was actually _relief_. He'd managed to convince himself that someone was deathly ill or something. In comparison with that, a divorce seemed pretty trivial, if completely unexpected. He gaped at her for a moment, waiting for her to continue.

Eliot, however, manifested his own relief in a gasp of theatrical outrage. "I'm _crushed_, darling. And I won't let you take the fine silverware when you leave, just to be clear. I don't care _what_ you put in the prenup."

Quentin glared at him, reaching across Arielle to slap him on the arm. "What do you mean?" he asked her. It was an odd sensation, being told by his wife who he was married to by (mostly) platonic agreement that their marriage was ending. Was he supposed to be sad? Along with the relief, his primary emotion was mostly just bewilderment.

"I mean that I met someone," she said bluntly. "Oh, and we also can't fuck anymore."

Quentin blinked at her. That was actually a bigger shock than the divorce thing. He'd always known Arielle might find someone else, but he hadn't really contemplated the fact that this would mean she'd no longer join them in bed. "Oh."

"You mean you found someone who can work you over better than the two hottest studs in the greater Langdale area?" Eliot asked. "Honey. I've got to _meet_ this guy."

"El, she's trying to be serious," Quentin said, trying not to smile. "But actually, Ari, we do have to meet this guy."

Arielle turned to Eliot, rolling her eyes and sniffing one final time. She'd gotten herself under control remarkably fast. She seemed to be feeling her own brand of relief, having finally said what she needed to say. "You can barely keep your hands off of Quentin long enough to treat a girl right," she said, winking at him. "A gal like me cannot survive on such rare, albeit stellar treatment."

"She called us _stellar_," Eliot stage-whispered to Quentin, and then broke into a grin at his unimpressed glare. "Okay, okay. Sorry. Tell us about him, Ari."

And then, to Quentin's amazement and Eliot's visible delight, Arielle _blushed_.

"Um. His name is Taseer," she said, her hair falling in a curtain in front of her face. "Taseer Pickwick."

Quentin's hand, which had been resting casually around Arielle's shoulder, jerked. "What?" he asked, at the same time that Eliot said, "_Pickwick_?"

"Why, do you know him?" Arielle asked, looking confused.

"Uh. No," Quentin said, relaxing his hand and rubbing Arielle's shoulder gently. "Not exactly. But we know a Pickwick. From... well, from the future."

It always felt very _'low-budget SyFy original series'_ to say it out loud like that, but Arielle took the whole time-travel thing in stride the way she always did. "Really? That's amazing! I wonder if it's a direct descendant?" And then she blushed again.

Quentin looked at Eliot, already knowing what his face was going to be doing. The suggestion that Arielle's genes could have filtered through the generations to create _Tick Pickwick_ seemed pretty unbelievable to him.

"It's probably a big family," Eliot said, with a wry twist to his smile. "Lots of branches, I'm sure. But - Ari - the Pickwick that we know was part of the nobility. He was the consul to the Fillorian throne until we got there, and he said his family had been Fillorian consuls for generations."

"Um - yes," Arielle said, laughing a little awkwardly. "That's the tricky thing. See, Taseer's uncle Toramond is the current consul in Whitespire."

"Oh shit, Ari."

"Daddy that's a bad word," Teddy announced, sidling up from out of nowhere. He'd wandered predictably away from the drollery of homework, and none of them had heard him come out of the cottage to join them outside. He walked straight at Eliot, who scooped him up automatically and then adjusted his hold to he could grip him around his middle and hold him sideways, like he was carrying a box under one arm. It was a new game, one that sent Teddy into paroxysms of joy at every turn.

"You're right, little man," Eliot said. "How should we punish him?"

"We could tickle him," Teddy suggested, giggling as Eliot swung around in a circle with him still clutched under one arm. "He hates that."

"It's not nice to touch someone unless they want to be touched, Ted," Arielle reminded him, but she raised her eyebrows at Quentin, who sighed in resignation. He lifted his arms away from his sides, presenting himself like a sacrificial offering.

"No, I've broken the rules, and the judge has spoken. The ruling is fair."

Eliot swung Teddy around and plopped him on top of Quentin, who laid back on the bench with his head in Arielle's lap to give Teddy a greater canvas on which to work. His son wasn't particularly good at actually finding his ticklish spots, but Quentin squirmed and laughed and shrieked obligingly, and then accepted Teddy's benediction in the form of a sloppy kiss on the cheek, once the punishment was over.

"This is so picturesque," Eliot said. "You look like a Norman Rockwell painting. I wish I had a camera."

"That's an Earth thing?" Arielle asked, as she scooped her son off of his father to allow Quentin to sit up again. "A camera?"

"I won't be distracted, Mrs. Coldwater," Eliot said. "If you're dating practical _royalty_, it's time to spill the deets."

"Eliot - " Arielle and Quentin said together, in twin expressions of alarm.

"What does that mean? Dating? Like kissing and stuff?" Teddy asked, way too sharp for his own good. Eliot's eyes widened.

"Oh, shhhi - "

Quentin jumped up and clapped a hand over Eliot's mouth, to save him from the wrath of the tickle monster.

"Thanks a lot," Arielle snapped. Then she turned to her son. "Mommy made a new friend, I was just telling your dads about him. Don't worry, you'll get to meet him soon."

Teddy blinked at her for a moment. "Cool. Can I color? I'm done with school."

"Sure, kiddo," Eliot said, and then beat a hasty retreat from Arielle's glare, Teddy's hand clasped tightly in his.

"Oh, he's going to pay for that," Arielle said.

"Have mercy on him, he's a total gossip whore," Quentin said, patting Arielle on the top of her head.

Arielle rolled here eyes but then sighed, her shoulders relaxing. "I guess it doesn't matter. I want Teddy to meet him. I want you all to meet him. He's - becoming pretty important to me."

Quentin smiled, incredibly happy for her. He'd worried about Arielle over the past several years, concerned that she was focusing all of her energy on her son instead of on pursuing what made her happy. As much as she'd been teasing earlier about the sex, Quentin could see she had a point - how would he feel if he lived with a couple who were all over each other the way he and Eliot were? How would he feel to be on the outside of that, an occasional spectator and visitor to that intimacy, but never an equal part?

"I'm so excited to meet him, Ari," Quentin said sincerely. "Eliot and I were starting to wonder if you were getting sick of us. You've been _visiting the farm_ a lot."

Arielle laughed. "I _have _been visiting the farm. That's where I met Taseer."

"You met the nephew of the Fillorian Consul at your family's farm?_ That_ sounds like a story I want to hear."

"It _is_ quite the story, actually. It reminds me of one of those Harley Quinn novels that Eliot told me about," Arielle said.

"Harlequin. Harley Quinn is a Batman villain. Or, well, maybe anti-hero, depending on which plot we're talking about exactly."

"Oh, yes, the one in the abusive relationship with the clown," Arielle said, nodding studiously. "Are the two terms connected?"

Sometimes Quentin wondered if they'd stuffed her head with too much Earth trivia. He flapped his hand at her. "Doesn't matter. How was it like a romance novel?"

"Oh, right," Arielle said, blushing again. "Well, he was touring the area, riding about, meeting the people."

"Good PR," Quentin nodded to himself.

"I don't know what that means, but sure," Arielle said. She'd learned to let some things go. "But his horse was frightened by a snake on the path who was stopping to ask for directions, and he fell off and injured his leg."

"And you were the charming lass who nursed him back to health?" Quentin asked, delighted. Eliot was going to _love_ this.

"More or less," her face was still mostly red, but after a few moments she stopped smiling, and looked up at Quentin with a serious expression on her face. She reached forward, grasping one of his hands in both of hers. "I don't know how it is on Earth," she said slowly. "But around here people understand that relationships change, and people drift apart. I will never regret marrying you, Quentin - "

"We're not drifting apart," Quentin interrupted. "Are we?"

"_No_," Arielle said. "What I meant was, I think that us getting married was absolutely the best thing for Teddy at the time, and I'm glad we did it. But our community isn't going to shun us or anything, just because we've decided to end the marriage."

"Well, considering they didn't shun us on Eliot's account, I think we're bound to be good no matter what," Quentin said, smiling. It wasn't exactly a secret in Langdale or the surrounding communities that Quentin shared a bed with his unmarried male friend instead of his wife. It was hard to stop gossip from spreading, especially when you didn't much care what people thought of you.

"So - you're okay?" Arielle asked, eyebrows raised.

"Will you be offended if I say I totally am?" Quentin said. "I mean, it's a little unexpected, sure, but I think we both deserve to be with people we love. I wouldn't have married you if it had meant I couldn't be with Eliot anymore. And now our marriage is an obstacle for you in getting what you want, so it makes sense to end it."

"That's very pragmatic of you," Arielle said. She was still holding his hand, and she squeezed it almost too hard, in punishment. "Would it kill you to do some rending of garments and begging down on your knees? I've got my pride."

Quentin laughed, a bright, happy sound. He didn't regret marrying Arielle either. He'd had a wife and he'd loved her well, albeit unconventionally. And now Arielle, one of his dearest friends in the world, was pursuing her own romance. Hopefully she could now find the same happiness he'd found with Eliot.

"Have you thought about what to tell Teddy?" Quentin asked, the uncomplicated joy in his heart faltering slightly as he thought of his son. Teddy was young enough that he didn't fully understand the relationships between his three parents. Visiting with the other youngsters on the Ashmore farm had taught Teddy that families came in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they didn't know how to explain to a five year old that yes, Mommy and Daddy are married, but Papa and Daddy are the couple and Mommy's their friend. It sounded ridiculous to Quentin half the time, too.

But Arielle shrugged, looking remarkably unconcerned. "The fact of the matter is, the marriage thing isn't really going to make a difference to Teddy. The part I'm worried about is - "

"What?"

"I don't want to get ahead of myself, but... Quentin, I really like this guy. I might even love him. And if it _does_ work out, and if it _does_ go somewhere, then I'd probably need to move out."

"But - " Quentin said, the stirrings of alarm creeping back in to his stomach.

"I wouldn't take Teddy from you, Quentin," Arielle said seriously.

"I know that. And anyway, Eliot and I wouldn't let you."

Arielle didn't look offended by this, merely nodded her head and bit her lip. "This is all hypothetical anyway. Taseer says he's serious about me, but he's an important man with an important family. It's possible they won't accept me, and the whole thing will be moot."

"But you'll be a little easier to accept if you don't already have a husband, I'm sure," Quentin said, understanding dawning. "Hey - Ari - what exactly does Taseer know about us?"

"Everything," Arielle said immediately, and then her lips twitched. "Well, the Fillory-friendly version of everything. He knows I'm married, knows the circumstances of that marriage. He knows I have a son."

"And he's cool with all of that?"

"It took a bit of explaining," Arielle admitted. "Not the part about Teddy, but the part about my husband..."

Quentin laughed. He was glad he'd never been put in the position of explaining his non-traditional yet still loving marriage to a prospective romantic partner. There were a lot of confusing threads to untangle. "But he's a good man? I mean, he must be, if you want him."

"How can you be so sure I'm a good judge of character?" Arielle said, nudging him with her shoulder. "After all, I stuck around with you boys all these years."

"Excellent point." Quentin smiled at her, but then let the teasing atmosphere drop away once more. "Ari, I can't wait to meet him. I'm so - " he swallowed around a lump in his throat. "God, this is so _weird_, you know? I want you to have everything, I want you to be happy, but I guess I wasn't expecting..."

"Taseer says he can get documents drawn up," Arielle said, squeezing his hand. "Documents that say that you and Eliot both have paternity rights to Teddy, if something happens to me. I told him all about why we got married, and he thinks he has enough pull to help us, just in case."

"That's great, Ari. That's amazing. I'm Teddy's legal father in any case, so I can't imagine anyone would try to take him. And besides, nothing's going to happen to you, this entire thing's a moot point."

"Obviously," Arielle said. "I'm indestructible." Then she sobered in turn, lifting a hand to brush along the side of Quentin's face. "You've been an amazing husband, Quentin."

"I don't know if I would say that."

"Well I would," Arielle said firmly. "I've been so happy here with you and Eliot. I love you both so much."

Quentin honestly couldn't think of a response to that. He felt like he might start blubbering at any moment. So instead, he leaned in to his wife, and kissed her. Arielle responded right away, pressing into him with a gentle tenderness that made him regret, just for a moment, the natural end of something beautiful. And then it was over. She pulled away from him, her eyes shining and her lips curled up in a sweet smile.

"So, um," Quentin said, glancing away and over his shoulder to where Eliot and Teddy were coloring, wanting to break the bittersweet tension of the moment. "When do we get to meet him?"

* * *

**ELIOT**

Taseer Pickwick was extremely charming. Eliot would almost have said _suspiciously_ charming except, well, he had been successfully charmed. He and Quentin spent the whole day at the farm giggling to each other about how on earth this guy could possibly be related to Tick Pickwick. Other than perhaps a similar roundness of face and complexion, the two had no physical resemblance, and in personality they could not have been more different. Tick, with all his exacting nitpicks and brown-nosing cynicism, could not be further from the friendly, funny, and _genuine_ person that Taseer Pickwick turned out to be.

"So which one of you is the husband?" Taseer had asked upon meeting Quentin and Eliot, looking between the two of them with narrowed eyes. "I'd like to know what I'm up against."

"It doesn't much matter," Eliot had replied smoothly, reaching a hand forward to shake Taseer's. "We're both the competition."

"Ah. Eliot," Taseer had said, without missing a beat. "Which means _you_," he continued, turning to Quentin, "are the lucky man who landed the lovely Arielle as a bride. Although, looking at your man here, I can hardly blame you for straying."

And that had been that. Quentin had blushed and protested, Arielle and Eliot had laughed at his discomfort, and they were friends. After an afternoon chat, during which Eliot and Quentin both gave Arielle their seal of approval, Teddy was fetched from Rodney Jr.'s house in order to meet Mommy's new friend. By the end of the day, they were fast friends as well.

"Does he seem too nice to you?" Quentin asked later, as the two of them headed back to the cottage. They'd decided to make the two-hour walk instead of taking a cart home. Teddy was staying with Ari and his grandparents; they'd come back home the next morning.

"There's usually a catch with this kind of thing, in my experience," Eliot agreed, taking Quentin's hand in his and swinging them together as they walked. "Maybe the catch in this case is just that we're losing Ari."

"We are not," Quentin said, a little too quickly, and Eliot turned to look at him, frowning.

"No, I know. I just mean she'll be around less."

Quentin's eyebrows were drawn up over his eyes, a forlorn, confused expression apparent on his face even in the dim evening light.

"Q," Eliot said. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, this is just - I don't know. It's weird. Right? It's weird. I guess I got used to things the way they were. And then out of the blue, Ari met someone, and it's serious, and - "

"Things are changing," Eliot said. He moved closer to Quentin as they walked, releasing his hand to wind an arm around his shoulder. Quentin's arm came up automatically to go around Eliot's waist. "I know you hate that."

"I'm genuinely happy for her. And he seems great. And I trust her judgment." Quentin almost sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

"It's okay if you're a little freaked out," Eliot said. "I'd be more worried if you were entirely unaffected. I mean, no matter the circumstances, getting divorced..."

Quentin stopped walking, tugging on Eliot's waist to turn him around so they were facing. "El, that's the only thing about this that I am unequivocally happy about," he said, sounding stern. "I don't want to pressure you or anything, but once I'm a free man..."

Eliot's heart flipped over several times in his chest. It shouldn't have mattered, but the thought of it was exhilarating nonetheless. He'd already been thinking about what it all meant, of course - from the second Arielle had brought up divorce. But there was no point in rushing things along - it would take a while for Quentin and Arielle's separation to become final. The local representative of Whitespire could sign off on it, but the council that made such acts legally sanctioned only met a few times a year up at the castle. It wouldn't normally have mattered much - local law had been good enough for the marriage between Quentin and Arielle, and should have been good enough to end that marriage as well. But since a prominent figure like Taseer Pickwick was involved, it was best to get the divorce sanctioned from on high.

"Do you think Taseer's going to turn around and propose to Ari the second she's free?" Eliot asked. He smiled at Quentin, to let him know he'd got the hint about their own potential marital status, and turned them to keep walking along the path towards home.

"You saw the way they were looking at each other. Disgustingly sweet," Quentin said, grinning.

"Now we can get payback for all the times Arielle rolled her eyes at us for being mushy," Eliot said. "Did you see the way he brought flowers for Ari's parents? Real class act."

"Would you bring flowers to my dad, if you could?" Quentin asked, laughing. Sometimes talking about their lives back home could put a damper on a good mood, but tonight that wasn't the case. It was nice sometimes to talk about the way things would have been different if they'd been on Earth.

"Oh, sure. Bouquet after bouquet. And I'd ask his permission to marry you, like a good farm-raised gentleman."

Quentin let out an honest-to-god giggle - perhaps Eliot's favorite sound in the universe. "You'd have to beg permission from Julia, too," he said.

"And you'd have to get a seal of approval from Margo," Eliot said. "Oh, shit. I'd have to divorce Fen."

"Somehow I think she'd let you off the hook," Quentin said. "I'd be far more terrified of Margo's reaction. She doesn't like to share."

Eliot smiled, letting an ounce of melancholy rise up inside him to mix with the easy tone of their conversation. "She never minded sharing me with you, Quentin. She knew from the start that you were different."

"God, if they could see us now."

Eliot raised Quentin's hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. "Someday. Someday we'll see them and we'll tell them the whole damn story, start to finish, and they'll all celebrate with us."

And as they continued home through the fading twilight, Eliot pretended very hard that he still believed that.

* * *

Eliot didn't want to admit it, but he shared Quentin's apprehension about the way things were going to change in their lives. No matter how amicable, no matter how much everyone involved wanted what was best for Teddy, there was going to be disruption now that Arielle had started a relationship with someone. Especially a someone like Taseer Pickwick, who couldn't exactly move in to the cottage and embrace a life of quiet peasantry like the rest of them.

One of their initial worries proved, luckily, to be unnecessary. For all that Fillory could be backwards with some of its thinking, it really was a socially progressive fantasy land in a lot of ways. As far as Eliot could tell, nobody in their community batted an eye at Arielle Coldwater, wife and mother, taking up with a new man. The gossip seemed to be strictly related to Taseer being practically nobility, rather than the fact of him in and of itself. Even Arielle's family didn't complain much at the changing status quo. Mrs. Ashmore wanted her daughter protected, that much was clear, and she'd been insistent on the marriage with Quenting because of that. But, apparently, and somewhat to Quentin's evident amusement, she didn't mind the upgrade in partners for her daughter. Only crotchety old Aunt Rita seemed to take real issue with the situation. She'd cornered Quentin and Eliot both one day at the farm and told them to keep an eye on Arielle, to which they both agreed with some bemusement. (_"Overprotective, or total nut-job?"_ _Eliot had asked after that encounter. "Or maybe genuine prophetess," Quentin had suggested, waggling his eyebrows. Eliot wasn't sure he was entirely joking._)

As the weeks and months passed, Arielle still technically called the cottage home, but she began to be away more and more. She sometimes visited Taseer at his country estate near the Fillorian capital, and even went with him on some of his official duties around the surrounding countryside. When she _was_ at home, Taseer was often with her. Teddy loved him, which was a boon. Their son seemed to have taken the whole thing entirely in stride; there was nothing confusing to a nearly six-year-old about a new friend in his mother's life, one who smiled at him and brought him toys and listened when he talked. Teddy's life had always been filled with a lot of love and care, but it had never been the traditional arrangement, and Teddy had never seemed to have a problem with that.

Taseer and Ari even brought Teddy with them once back to Taseer's estate, a week-long trip to which Eliot and Quentin had agreed easily enough. It was always nice to get a little bit of time to themselves, but by the time they had returned, they'd both been missing Teddy horribly.

On a morning a few weeks after their return, Arielle had cornered Eliot and Quentin inside. They could hear Taseer and Teddy laughing together in the yard as Arielle leveled them both with a serious glance. "So, I met his uncle."

"The consul?" Quentin asked, pitching his voice low in an adorable show of awed reverence. "What was he like?"

Arielle twisted her face up. "Um. Nice?"

Eliot laughed, big and loud. "God, I hope you were better at hiding your antipathy when you were meeting the guy, Ari."

"He was a little... judgmental." She paused. "A lot judgmental. He didn't come out and say it, but it was pretty clear that he didn't think I was good enough for his nephew."

"What an idiot," Eliot said immediately. Anyone who couldn't see how amazing Arielle was didn't deserve the time of day, in his opinion. Arielle smiled at him, grateful but still clearly unhappy.

"Taseer says he doesn't care what his uncle thinks. There have always been problems between them, Toramond wants to keep Taseer on a leash, make him a smiling figure-head, and Taseer has never had much interest in politics. But he can't just cut and run, you know? He has responsibilities, and I worry I'm making things harder for him."

Quentin put an arm around Arielle's shoulder, giving her a squeeze. "I can see how crazy you are about him, and it's obvious he feels the same way about you."

"But what if that's not enough?" Arielle said. "You two wouldn't get it, you're both so in love with each other, and you're on this quest, it's like the universe wants you to be a couple. But there are _obstacles_ for me and Taseer, and... I don't know. I worry."

Eliot met Quentin's eyes, saw the spark of amusement mixed in with the concern. "Ari, my dear," Eliot said. "If you think Quentin and I didn't face any _obstacles_, then you have not been paying attention during story-time."

She sighed, a reluctant smile on her face. "Okay, fair enough. I just meant - "

"We know what you meant," Quentin assured her. "Politics." He shuddered dramatically, and Eliot chose not to remind Quentin that he himself was kind of still a King of Fillory in the future, and that Eliot was not only married to a woman for political reasons, but had been engaged to marry a second time in order to forge an alliance with a neighboring Kingdom.

"I'm probably just worried about nothing," Arielle said, shrugging. "He's fantastic, isn't he?"

"If I were a single man..." Eliot said, and smiled bright and wide when Ari and Q both leveled him with a glare.

But then Arielle turned a mischievous glance towards Quentin, her glare morphing into something evil and retaliatory. "Taseer doesn't think Eliot's too shabby either," she told Quentin, falsely casual. "Do you think you'd be willing to lend him out, so he could teach Taseer a thing or two about the art of pleasing a woman?"

Eliot hated her.

"Oh, gosh," Quentin said, tapping a finger against his mouth. "I mean, sharing him with _you_ was one thing, but I'd be worried your man might whisk Eliot away with him. Eliot's royal in his blood, you know. A consul's nephew might suit him better."

Eliot hated him.

"But that would leave us at home with the kiddo," Arielle sighed. She put a finger up, eyes alight with triumph, as if something had just occurred to her. "And I'll finally have my husband to myself!"

"A dream come true at last, my darling wife." Quentin swooped forward and took Arielle in his arms, holding her up as she swooned dramatically backwards into his chest.

Eliot loved them.

* * *

Six months in to their new routine, with Ari and Taseer popping in and out, whisking Teddy away with them on occasion, after a trip of their own to visit Taseer's impressive estate and Arielle's new sometimes-home, Eliot came into the cottage one morning to cajole Quentin out of bed. He'd been sleeping in, but they'd worked on the mosaic late into the night, so he hadn't thought much of it at first. It was only as he approached the bed and and saw that Quentin wasn't dozing peacefully, but was instead curled up into a painfully tight ball, the covers pulled up over his head, that he realized what was happening.

"Q," Eliot said, his heart sinking.

"I don't feel good," Quentin said.

"Baby, let's go outside for a while."

"You go."

"Quentin, I'm serious, it'll be good for you to get some sun."

"Doesn't matter."

"How about some breakfast?"

"Not hungry."

Eliot sat down on the side of the bed, cautious. Quentin had been a bit subdued the past couple of days, but he'd hoped this was just a consequence of missing Teddy, who was with Taseer and Ari for a long weekend. But now... he leaned forward to put a hand on Quentin's shoulder, and tried not to flinch when Quentin immediately rolled away from his touch.

"I love you," he said, cautious and heartsick.

Quentin was silent for a very long time. "Love you too," he said finally, grudgingly. "Sorry I'm broken."

"Don't do that," Eliot said. He wanted to card his fingers through Quentin's hair, wanted to lie back down on the bed and wrap his arms tight around him. It was one of the hardest things about Quentin's illness. Normally, Q loved it when he was tactile, and his touch could ease the worst of his fears and bad moods. But in this state, none of Eliot's usual methods of comfort were welcome. "You don't need to apologize for anything."

"Okay," Quentin said, muffled into the pillow. "Can you just leave me alone for a while?"

He thought about saying _no_, and trying to force Quentin up out of bed, but he had some experience with this, after all. It terrified him down to his bones every time Quentin got like this, but he had to trust him to be an adult. He had to trust him not to hurt himself - he never had yet since they'd been in Fillory. He had to believe that whatever darkness was crowding its way into Quentin's brain right now, it would pass as it always did, with time. Eliot knew his job. He knew how to gauge Quentin's moods and get him to eat a little, knew when begging and cajoling and commanding was likely to work, and when it would just send Quentin further into himself.

And so Eliot left him alone, as requested.

He went outside, and he worked on the mosaic by himself, internally cursing Arielle and Taseer for uprooting their stable lives, even though he knew it wasn't really anyone's fault. Being out here by himself, without the sound of his son's babbling conversation or Arielle's tinkling laugh or Quentin's endearing rambling reminded him forcefully and painfully of their earliest months at the mosaic, when they were desperate for answers and aching for home. He blinked away thoughts of Margo and the others, and set himself to work. This was temporary. It was always, always temporary. And in any case, Teddy would be home the next day, and Arielle would be staying for a while. Taseer had business in Whitespire and Ari had decided she didn't want to keep Teddy away from any of his parents for that long.

It would be good, like old times, before Taseer had entered their lives. And Quentin's depression would lift as the ease of familiarity settled over him. He'd get out of bed and he'd come to Eliot, warm and soft with affection and apology. He'd tell stories to Teddy at bedtime. He'd go on walks with Eliot and they'd make out against a tree trunk and then go and get tea with Ostrich. Q would help with the mosaic and get in the way when Eliot and Ari made dinner, and he'd kiss him goodnight at the end of a long day, cuddle up close to him in bed, like always. And it would be fine, just like it always turned out to be.

Everything would be fine.


	9. Chapter Nine - In Which Times are Hard and then Get Even Worse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay everyone... here it is! I hope you enjoy, and I hope you'll all stick with me for what comes next. Mind the tags. I've made you certain promises and I'm sticking to them!

**ELIOT**

It was the worst bout of depression that Quentin had had since they'd been together. Really, since Eliot had known Quentin. But despite how much it scared Eliot, terrified him right down to the marrow of who he was, it was also not totally unfamiliar. Sure, it was taking longer for Quentin to get back on his feet. But Eliot had quite a bit of training on how to support his partner when times were rough, and his devotion to that singular goal did not waver in the slightest, just because this time was particularly challenging.

Quentin was still down when Arielle and Teddy came home. It wasn't that Quentin had never had bad brain days before during Teddy's lifetime, but this was the first time he'd been out of commission for multiple days, since Teddy was old enough to more or less understand that something was wrong. The whole thing put Eliot in the wretched position of trying to be there for Q while also supporting his son - should he keep them apart? Tell Teddy that Quentin was sick and that they needed to give him some space? Or would it help Quentin to be confronted with his offspring, force him into action? And even if it _was_ a good idea for Q, did that mean it was the right thing for Teddy?

On top of all of this was the fact that Arielle thought of him as the Quentin-whisperer. She'd had far less intimate and prolonged contact with him when he was in a depressive episode, and she kept looking to him for advice when Quentin wouldn't perk up and talk to her like normal.

After a handful of days of that, Quentin passed from sleepy-depressed into pissy-depressed, which was basically Eliot's least favorite Quentin in existence. Instead of lying curled up and miserable in bed, he was now out and about, avoiding Teddy for the most part, but surly and snappish with Eliot and Arielle and the universe in general, determined, at least in Eliot's view, to make everybody in his vicinity feel as shitty as he clearly did. And the very fact that a surly and snappish Quentin got on Eliot's nerves, even though it was obviously his depression making him act that way, just made Eliot feel guilty, and there was a whole cycle of self-hatred that went along with that...

Well. Suffice it to say that it was a rough couple of weeks in the Coldwater-Waugh-Ashmore household.

"Mommy says Daddy's sick," Teddy said to Eliot one morning as he munched on a piece of bread for lunch. "But he went for a walk this morning. Shouldn't he be in bed if he's sick?"

"He's not that kind of sick," Eliot told Teddy, catching a mug of juice as Teddy's arm flailed out, nearly knocking it over. "He's... his brain's sick."

"Oh. Will he get better?"

"Of course," Eliot said, trying to gift his son with a genuine smile. He was exhausted. He never slept well when Quentin wasn't touching him, and while they'd technically still been lying in bed together every night, they might as well have been on separate continents for all the connection he'd felt. The tiredness was making him snappy as well, which was just not good for anyone.

Teddy was inside sleeping later that evening, when Quentin got back from his prolonged walk through the woods. He went inside without looking at Arielle or Eliot at all, clearly still brooding, and Eliot tried to ignore the frisson of relief at the sight of him. Quentin needed space, and that was understandable. It didn't stop his brain from going to all sorts of dangerous places whenever he stormed off on his own like that.

Sighing, Eliot looked away from the doorway through which Quentin had just vanished, and back to the mosaic tiles stacked in front of him. He was about to ask Arielle to slide a few more red ones in his direction when he heard a small sniff, and looked up to see that she'd started crying.

"Ari," Eliot said. "What - "

"He's just - he's not Quentin when he's like this," Arielle said. "It's so _hard_."

Arielle wasn't the type to cry at the drop of a hat, which is how Eliot knew that she'd probably been building to this for a while. "God, Ari. Come here." He stood up and pulled her to her feet as well, gathering her into his arms. "I know it sucks, but it'll get better."

"And I miss Taseer," Arielle said. "And I'm not - I'm not the kind of pathetic and weepy woman who moons over a man, but I just - _love_ him, you know? I love him, and I love Quentin, and I miss both of them all at the same time..."

"There's nothing pathetic about pining for the man you love," Eliot said. "Or if there is, I've got you _so_ fucking beat in that department."

Arielle giggled weakly into his chest, her arms tight around him. "Quentin's a real heart-breaker, I know."

"He has simply no idea of the power he wields."

"I just - I know you've explained it to me, why he gets like this, but I guess I never appreciated how rough it must be for you. And then I feel stupid for making it about me, because he's the one who's suffering. I don't know. Does that make sense?"

"_So_ much sense," Eliot said, relieved. He and Arielle had been tiptoeing around each other almost as much as they'd tiptoed around Quentin, but it was just now occurring to him that Arielle might be the perfect sounding board. "You feel like a failure," Eliot continued. "Because you should be able to think of the words to say, or - or the way to _touch_ him that would make everything okay. Trust me, I know how you feel."

"When I got sick as a child, my father would make me this very specific type of soup. It was just a simple broth, really, but he only ever made it when I was sick or feeling sad. Just the smell of that soup now can reinvigorate me from almost anything," Arielle said. "I wish more than anything I could make something, a food or a draught that would lift him out of this."

Eliot pulled away from the hug finally, keeping a hand on Arielle's arm. She wasn't crying anymore, but there were still tear tracks on her face, and he reached up with his other hand to thumb them away, smiling down at her fondly. "If we were on Earth I'd take him to talk to a psychiatrist, and there would be medicine he could take that would _help,_ but here..."

"A psychiatrist? That's one of the special healers, right?" Arielle asked.

"Right. It's a kind of doctor, one who helps people with mental illnesses."

"Like Quentin's depression," Arielle recited dutifully. Fillory and Earth didn't really have the same language around these types of things, so Quentin and Eliot had been sure to clue her in as best as they were able. "And one of these special doctors would give him a tonic, or something, and he'd get better?"

"It's a little more complicated than that, but yeah. There are also therapists, people he could talk to, to work out a bit more what he's feeling and learn behavioral tools to help."

"But it's random, right? Didn't you say he just feels bad sometimes and there's really no reason?"

"Yes," Eliot said, but he'd hesitated a beat too long, and Arielle's eyes sharpened, her focus narrowing. She pulled a step away from him, and tightened her arms around her stomach. She looked like Quentin did when he was trying to comfort himself.

"Yes? But sometimes there_ is_ a reason?"

"Not always," Eliot hedged. "But yeah, I mean - change in routine isn't good for him, sometimes it takes a while for his body and mind to re-calibrate." Eliot bit his lip, remembering how years ago, after the initial high of getting together had passed, Quentin had sunk in to a bit of a somber state. He'd felt so offended and unsure, hurt and confused, and Quentin, bless his heart, had had to explain his own illness to Eliot once he'd been back on the upswing.

"So then this is my fault," Arielle said. "Because of Taseer, and the divorce, and all these big changes - "

"Ari, sweetheart," Eliot said. "It's not your fault. It's how life works. Let me ask you something. Do you love Taseer?"

"Yes."

"Is he good in bed?"

"_Eliot._"

"Well?"

"...Yes."

"Okay then. Quentin will be okay. He was down for a while and we helped him with that. And now he's upset and he might say some stuff he doesn't mean, and we'll ride it out. And eventually - "

"It would be just fantastic if the two of you could stop talking about me like I'm a child," a voice snapped from behind the two of them. Quentin had re-emerged from the cottage without either of them noticing. Arielle looked stricken, her big bright eyes filling again with tears.

"Oh, get the fuck over yourself, Coldwater," Eliot snapped back.

And when Quentin had huffed away and Arielle turned to look at Eliot again, astonished, he shrugged. "And sometimes your temper gets the best of you. And Q forgives you for that, too."

* * *

Two days after that, Eliot woke up to the feeling of Quentin climbing practically on top of him in their bed. His breathing was shallow and uneven, and Eliot knew even in the dark that he was crying.

"Q."

"I'm a fucking monster, how can you stand to live with me when I'm like this?" Quentin said, gasping a few breaths into Eliot's collarbone. "I'm a _dick_, I say all of these things, and I'm - I'm _trying_ to hurt you, and then you just forgive me every time, I don't get how you _can_."

"Stop," Eliot said, wiggling his arms free so he could wrap them firmly around Quentin. "_Stop_, baby. It's not your fault."

"That's bullshit."

"Well then _fine_, it's all your fault, and you're a terrible person, and I'm just the weird sicko who loves you anyway."

"Stop trying to make me laugh," Quentin said, but he'd stopped crying. "God, I owe you like ten thousand apologies."

"Forgiven," Eliot said instantly. "I'm just relieved you're feeling better. I mean - " he corrected, when Quentin huffed out a little sob against his collarbone, "I mean, I'm glad you're not being a dick anymore. Because that's usually a prelude to you feeling better."

Quentin slid his face up so he was looking straight down at Eliot. Even in the dark, Eliot could see the look of disbelief on Quentin's face. "You had to hide me from our son. I yelled at you like a million times for absolutely no reason. I disappeared into the woods for half a day, even though I know that drives you crazy. Hell, that's partly why I _did_ it. How - how can it be that easy for you to just look past all that?"

The serious answer was that Eliot was so in love with Quentin that he'd forgive him for literally anything. And also that he _knew_ Quentin. He knew how hard Quentin worked to manage his illness, and he understood that here, in Fillory, the land without antidepressants, he was having to work against a chemical imbalance in his brain at a severe disadvantage. He was in awe of how hard Quentin fought every day to be happy, for himself and for his family. But Quentin had already heard all of the serious answers to these questions, so instead of saying any of that, he shrugged, smoothing his hands up and down Quentin's back in a repetitive, soothing gesture.

"Well, for one thing, you're _really_ good in bed."

Quentin pinched him, hard, but he was laughing through his tears now, his body releasing some of its agonized tension. "You're a dick."

"So we're made for each other," Eliot said. Quentin sighed, his breath warm against Eliot's neck. "Q, you've forgiven me for every unkind word I've ever said to you, no matter the circumstances. Can you not trust me to do the same?"

Quentin sat up and looked down at him, frowning. "Of course I trust _you_. It's _me_ I don't trust."

"Yeah, well," Eliot said. "Depression's a bitch. It's not fun for any of us, but you're still _here_ and we're _okay_, Quentin. I promise."

Quentin stared at him, his eyes darting over Eliot's face like he was looking for evidence that he was lying. Finally he released a breath and flopped back down onto Eliot, his head resting just under Eliot's chin. "Okay. Okay, but don't let me get away with that shit. Just because my brain's fucked doesn't give me the right to treat you like garbage."

"You didn't," Eliot said, half truthful. "You were just grumpy, Q, it happens."

"God, what Ari must think of me. She's never seen me that bad before," Quentin said.

"She's worried about you," Eliot said carefully. "And yeah, she - I mean, it hasn't been easy on her, but she loves you. Nothing could ever change that."

Quentin went quiet for a while, curled up against Eliot. There wasn't really much more either of them could say, and so Eliot let himself sink in to the relief, ducking to press kisses along the top of Quentin's head. He loved him so much that sometimes it crept up on him unawares, overwhelmed him and bowled him over with an aching tenderness he had no way of processing. Whenever Quentin's mental health took a turn for the worse, it was like he'd gone away. And when he climbed back out of that darkness, it was like Eliot had permission to realize how much he'd been missing him. The truth was, he'd endure anything and everything for the privilege of this right here - Quentin's warm and soft body tucked up next to him, the _trust_, the _honor_ of Quentin turning to him in his distress. He wished he could find the words for it.

"Teddy's okay?" Quentin said finally.

"Teddy's fine, baby," Eliot promised. "He knows you've been sick. He'll be so excited to talk to you tomorrow." Then, after a pause, "If you're up for it?"

"Yes. I - miss him. I miss Ari, I've missed_ you_," Quentin said. And it was so similar to the way Eliot had just been thinking that it made him smile, his chest tight from a potent combination of relief and remembered pain.

It took a long time to get Quentin to fall back asleep, but eventually he did, the two of them dozing with Quentin still mostly on top of Eliot, blanketing him and providing a constant, needed reminder that they were still together, holding on through the best and worst of times.

* * *

Eliot had kept his distance while Arielle and Quentin had done their weepy reconciliation, but had joined in when Teddy, eager at the news that Daddy was feeling better, insisted on a trip to the river for a swim.

It had been one of those rare days, where you recognize future nostalgia while it's still happening - a perfect happiness, a stillness and clarity of purpose. This was it - this was Eliot's whole world, right here down by the riverbank, with Teddy giggling and splashing in the water, Quentin bright-eyed and smiling as he followed his son in and taught him some basic swim techniques. Arielle was effervescent with relief, laughing at every joke Quentin made, hanging on them both with a casual intimacy that had been lacking in the last several months, as she pulled away from being their partner into being a partner for Taseer.

By the time they returned home, dusk was falling, and Eliot felt a sense of renewal, as if they'd weathered a great storm and come out the other side. He and Quentin made love that night for the first time in more than two weeks, and that morning they set to work on a new mosaic pattern, reinvigorated and happy just with the simple fact of togetherness. In fact, by the time Taseer returned to the cottage at the end of the following week, things had mostly smoothed themselves back into a familiar rhythm.

Which, of course, meant that things were about to go to shit.

Later, Eliot would look back on the day of Taseer's return, obsessively analyzing every moment of his behavior and wondering if he should have seen it all coming. But how could he have? Taseer had been as friendly and wonderful as ever.

They'd been alerted to his arrival by Arielle, who was outside with Teddy while Quentin and Eliot were both still inside cleaning up after breakfast. There was a sudden explosion of shouts and pleased laughs, and by the time they'd gone outside to see what was going on, Taseer had Arielle and Teddy both in his arms.

"You're back early!" Quentin called as they both approached. Taseer released Arielle and came forward to give first Quentin and then Eliot a firm hug.

"I was missing Eliot too much to stay away," Taseer said, and they all laughed.

"I have that effect on most people."

"Are you going to help us with the puzzle?" Teddy asked Taseer.

"Oh. Um - sure, Ted. I'd love to. If it's okay with your dads?"

"The more the merrier," Quentin said. And they'd spent a happy morning working on the puzzle, allowing Taseer to pick his own design for the attempt. It had all been so _normal_. Taseer had stayed the night at the cottage, and the following morning there had been more hugs, and farewells, and Taseer and Arielle had left to go back to his estate. It was nothing more than a long weekend - a few days away and then Arielle was coming back to collect Teddy. Normal. Part of their routine. Teddy hugged his mother goodbye, Eliot and Quentin followed suit, and they waved as Ari and Taseer set off in Taseer's wagon.

Three days later, the letter arrived, and the world tilted on its axis.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

"You two must be coming up in the world," Doady said, handing over a small stack of paper to Quentin as he accepted a mug of ale from Eliot with the other hand. "Cheers, Eliot."

"We're coming up in the world?" Eliot said, looking over Quentin's shoulder at the stack of mail. "Why did nobody tell me?"

Quentin smiled at him, distracted by the thick parchment envelope right at the top of the stack of mail. Everything else in the pile was expected - invoices for orders from Langdale, a quick note from a friend in town inviting them for drinks. But the envelope looked official, and quite formal, hence Doady's comment.

"Maybe it's your divorce," Eliot suggested, picking the envelope up and flipping it over to look at the seal on the back. "It looks like it's straight from Whitespire."

"It's too early," Quentin said, taking the envelope back from Eliot and breaking the seal. "There's like a year long backlog on that stuff up at the castle. And anyway, look, it's addressed to both of us."

Teddy had just come over to talk to Doady, as excited as ever at the sight of visitors. The two of them were chattering happily about something while Quentin unfolded the single piece of parchment inside the envelope and started to read. Eliot was right behind him, the length of his chest pressed against Quentin's back, reading over his shoulder. It was from Taseer. Quentin frowned, narrowing his eyes at he started to read. They had just seen Taseer a few days before, and Arielle was due to arrive back home in the morning. If he had a message for them, surely Arielle could have just told them.

_Messrs. Coldwater and Waugh,_

_I should begin this letter by telling you both how grateful I am for the kindness you have shown to me over the months of our acquaintance. It should be clear to you by now that I hold Mrs. Coldwater, soon to be Ms. Ashmore once again, in the highest esteem, and I cannot begin to express my gratitude for your understanding and support of our relationship. To say that our situation is unique would be perhaps an understatement, and I will admit to some trepidation when Arielle first explained to me the circumstances of her marriage and her son. However, having had the pleasure of getting to know you this past year, I am gratified to know that my beloved has had such true and stalwart friends in her life, and such excellent parents to young Theodore._

_This brings me to the reason for my message. As you are well aware, I have certain responsibilities to my uncle in Whitespire, and there was some concern that my new relationship would prove to be embarrassing to the leading family of Fillory. As much as we all know, those of us who are involved in the situation, that there is nothing untoward or immoral in our various relationships, from an outside perspective things are decidedly less clear. For the sake of my political future and my familial relationship, discretion is of the utmost importance._

_To that end, it grieves me to say that Arielle and myself will be required to stay away for some time. It is best if we present her to the court as an unmarried lady, and the existence of a husband, an additional lover, and a son, is certainly not conducive to this goal. Arielle will travel with a trusted escort to collect some of her belongings, and from that point forward we will need to restrict all communications between us. You have been dear friends to me, and Arielle speaks in only the warmest terms about you. If not for her trust in you, I dare say she would have hesitated over the necessity of leaving her son in your care._

_I imagine this news will be difficult for you to receive. I ask only that you think of what is best for all involved. Arielle wants things to be this way, and it will only cause her pain and embarrassment should you do anything rash._

_Yours most affectionately,_

_Taseer Pickwick_

Quentin looked up when he'd finished the letter. His fingers felt numb against the page. Slowly, with the feeling that time itself had slowed around him, he looked up at Eliot. His partner was white-faced and frozen, his eyes wide. His hands were back against the outdoor table, arms taut as he held himself still. Quentin looked back down at the letter, half convinced that its contents would have changed in the meantime. But no, it was still there. Stark ink against the page.

"Arielle wants things to be this way," Eliot said, his voice hoarse and livid, quoting from the letter. "Ha fucking ha. Like I'm going to trust a fucking word of this until I hear it from her own lips."

"El," Quentin said, glancing over to where Teddy and Doady were talking, just a few weeks away. "Keep your voice down."

"Keep my - " Eliot started, his eyes wide and livid, but then he darted his glance over to his son and shuttered them closed, swallowing the rest of the sentence. "Right. Okay. Doady?" Doady turned over his shoulder to look at Eliot. "Can you keep Ted company for a minute?"

Doady looked from Eliot to Quentin and his eyes widened. Quentin wondered in an abstract sort of way what his face looked like right now. He felt blank, like if he allowed himself to feel even one emotion, it would all come pouring out of him at once, all-encompassing and destructive. Eliot grabbed Quentin's shoulder and steered him inside, once Doady had nodded his acquiescence. Teddy didn't seem to notice anything amiss - he was babbling happily away without a care in the world.

"What the _fuck_," Eliot said, the second they were inside. "What the _fuck_ is going on?"

"How should I know?" Quentin asked. "God, this makes no sense. Maybe - maybe Taseer didn't really write it? Do we know if this is his handwriting?"

"I don't know if I've ever seen his handwriting," Eliot said. "But it doesn't matter - we have to go to Whitespire right now."

"But - " Quentin said, swallowing down some of his alarm at the look on Eliot's face. He was so pale he was almost gray, his eyes burning and intense. "El. Taseer says not to come - "

"I'm going to kill him, Q," Eliot said. It didn't sound like an empty threat.

"Okay, woah. Hold on a second," Quentin said. "Let's just - obviously this is fucked up, but we have to be practical about this."

"How the hell are we not on the same page about this?" Eliot said, his voice raising. Quentin held out a hand to him, warning him to keep quiet. Eliot hissed but continued in a lower tone. "Taseer is holding her _prisoner_."

"But he's not," Quentin said. The numbness was fading a bit and he was starting to think clearly. It was easier somehow to think of this as a mystery to solve, another riddle to untangle in their often bizarre lives. He waved the letter at Eliot, gesturing broadly. "Think about it, El. It says that Arielle's coming here. To get her stuff. If she was really being kept there against her will, Taseer would hardly let her come back here without him, would he?"

"So then what? You're not saying you think Ari's a sociopath who's decided to abandon Teddy and - "

Quentin slapped him on the arm with the letter. "You actually need to calm the fuck down, Eliot."

Eliot looked affronted for a moment and then his eyes shuttered shut for a moment. He blinked them open, his shoulders slumping forward as he reached his arms out. Quentin went automatically, folding himself into Eliot's embrace. "Okay. Sorry, Q, I just - "

"No, believe me, I get it," Quentin said, burrowing his face into Eliot's chest. "I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack."

"Please don't," Eliot said, his hands shaking as they moved up and down Quentin's back. "I can't exactly call an ambulance."

"Okay," Quentin said, ready to promise Eliot anything, even the impossible. "I have a theory," he continued finally, pulling with some reluctance out of Eliot's arms. Eliot fell back against the support beam in the cottage entryway, his arms crossed. Quentin could tell he was on the verge of yelling again, the fear and confusion clear in every tense line of his body.

"What's your theory?"

"What if someone made Taseer write this? What if they're _both_ being kept prisoner for some reason? Maybe this is his uncle, or another member of the nobility who needs Taseer for something. Maybe Ari's being used in some way, to - to keep him in line, or whatever."

"Okay," Eliot said slowly. "So Taseer was being supervised while he was writing to us? Why wouldn't he have slipped us a clue?"

"Maybe he _did_," Quentin said, stepping forward and holding the letter out again so they could both read it. "If Arielle's coming here, we'll be able to find out directly from her what's going on. Maybe something sinister is going on, and they're both playing along to protect themselves. All we have to do is get Arielle away from this 'trusted escort' when she comes to collect her belongings. And then even if she has to go back there to keep her cover, we can figure out a way to help them both."

Something in Eliot relaxed. "It's as good a theory as anything else," he said finally, frowning down at the letter. "It helps to think Taseer isn't..."

"That's what really upset you," Quentin said, realizing this for the first time. "That you might have misjudged him."

"I was _really upset_," Eliot shot back, rolling eyes eyes, "because Ari's in trouble. But yeah. I thought I liked the guy. I really don't want to be this wrong about him."

"God, me neither," Quentin said. And then something occurred to him, and he groaned, stepping forward into Eliot again, forehead thunking against his chest. "Fuck. I know it's my theory, but I just realized that our only play at this point is to just sit around and _wait_, which is just..."

"Fucking unbearable?" Eliot asked, bringing his arms up around Quentin again, an automatic gesture that almost made Quentin smile, even given the circumstances. "There is one thing we can do. Doady can bring a message to the Ashmore farm. We should clue them in on what's going on."

* * *

The waiting was just as bad as Quentin thought it would be. They'd dashed off a quick note to the Ashmore family to tell the more or less what Taseer had said in his letter, and that had resulted in a flurry of messages back and forth between the cottage and the farm. Of course, Arielle's parents and three brothers all wanted to storm the castle as much as Eliot had in the beginning, but eventually they all agreed to wait for Arielle to arrive so they could figure out what was really going on, and make an informed decision about what to do next.

Every day was a mockery of the ordinary. They got up, they took care of Teddy, they worked on the mosaic. The only significant change to their routine is that they took care to make sure someone was always at the cottage, in case Arielle came by. If Quentin went on a walk, or took Teddy to the farm to visit the family, then Eliot stayed behind, and vice versa.

And so it was one day nearly two weeks after Taseer's letter had arrived, that Eliot had taken Teddy down to the river to bathe, and Quentin had stayed home, working on a mosaic pattern for want of anything better to do. It was a nice day, clear skies overhead, and under normal circumstances Quentin would have been down at the river with his partner and his son. They would have spent a slow and happy morning splashing together in the water, telling Teddy stories about their adventures on Earth. They might have brought a book down to the shore, or paper for Teddy to draw on, or write on - Teddy wasn't the most scholarly little boy in the world, but he was more receptive to learning time when it was happening outside, with the allure of nature around him, making the whole thing feel more like a game than studying.

And yet instead of this mythical nonexistent day of peaceful joy with Eliot and Teddy, Quentin was here, where he always was. The tiles clicked familiarly against one another as he stacked them by color. His knees ached just a little from how often he was forced to get up and down from the ground. The callouses on the pads of his fingers were taking on dirt from the tiles and the dust and pollen in the air. He'd gotten into a steady rhythm, his mind gone quiet for the first time in days, when suddenly the sound of an approaching carriage interrupted his reverie.

He was on his feet and moving towards the sound almost before he'd processed what this could mean. And sure enough, as the carriage wheeled its way into the clearing, stopping a short distance off, he could see her - Arielle, stunning in a beautiful dark red dress, accompanied by a stout man dressed in royal colors, who hopped off of the driver's box to offer Arielle a hand as she stepped down.

"Ari," Quentin said, rushing forward with a feeling of relief so intense he could sense tears springing to his eyes. He hadn't quite appreciated how scared he'd been for her until this exact moment.

"Hello, Quentin," she said, oddly formal. Quentin's eyes flicked automatically towards the driver. They couldn't speak freely in front of him.

"Won't you come in?" Quentin asked, unconsciously echoing her formality. His hands were shaking. He wanted to touch her, to pull her into his arms so he could feel once and for all that she was real, and solid, and unhurt.

"That would be lovely." She turned over her shoulder and addressed the driver. "If you could wait here, Stanton. I'll bring a bag inside and collect the things I need."

The second they were inside, Quentin turned to Arielle, excitement and anxiety warring for dominance, catching in his throat. "Ari, are you okay?"

"I'm doing well," Arielle said, as bland as if this was any other reunion, after a handful of days apart. She started walking towards the back of the cottage, to her own room.

"You're - doing well?" Quentin echoed, following her anxiously. "Ari, what's going on? We got Taseer's letter, we've been so worried - "

"If you received the letter, then you know what's going on."

Quentin followed Arielle into her room, watching in growing bewilderment as she set about collecting a few objects and adding them to a small satchel she had slung over her arm. She wasn't bothering with most of the items in the room - just a few pieces of clothing, the accessories on her small dresser, a book of poems Quentin had bought her once for an anniversary.

"Ari," Quentin said, frowning as she continued around the room, calm in her collecting. "Come on. It's just us, you can talk to me."

"I am talking to you," Arielle said. She didn't sound impatient, but she did sound very definite and firm. There was no give to her posture or her tone, no hint that she was in distress or felt conflicted about what she was saying. "I'm telling you clearly and plainly what I want."

"I - what? What you want?"

"I want to collect my belongings, and go back to Whitespire to be with Taseer. We will wait it out until the divorce can be finalized, and I will marry him and take my place at his side."

"Jesus. Can that guy outside hear us somehow? Is he a magician?"

Arielle just blinked at him, and then frowned, a pucker of annoyance between her brows. "No, Quentin. I'm telling you the truth." She pushed past him and left the room, walking towards the front door of the cottage. "This is what I want."

"So what you want is to abandon your son," Quentin said, following quickly. His heart was in his throat, his eyes prickling with unshed tears. If he could just hold her here until Teddy and Eliot got back, then maybe... but then again, did he really want to subject Teddy to the sight of his indifferent and cold mother?

"It's not abandonment," Arielle said. "I love Teddy." They had stepped outside, and Arielle had stopped, finally turning to face him. She looked like Arielle. She sounded like Arielle. She didn't _feel_ like Arielle. It was making him crazy.

"I don't - you're not making any sense," Quentin said, fighting for calm. "You love Teddy, and yet you want to leave him here with me and El and go live in Whitespire?"

"You received Taseer's letter," Arielle said, and now there _was_ just a hint of impatience in her tone, even as she stayed mostly collected. "It would be politically disadvantageous for Taseer to be coupled with a divorced woman, one with a child. It's in his best interests if I present myself - "

"Oh, who the fuck cares about Taseer's best interests?" Quentin shouted. "Are you brainwashed or something? What the fuck is actually _happening_ right now?"

"That's enough," Arielle snapped. She grabbed the hem of her skirt, lifting the knapsack now full of her belongings over her shoulder. "When things settle down, we can talk more, but it's best if I go now."

"You don't want to see your son?" Quentin said, a final gambit. The fear was crawling up his throat and down his limbs now. Something had to be seriously wrong for Arielle to be acting like this. If she was in trouble, she wasn't giving Quentin any real hint of what kind of trouble, and he had no idea what to do next. All he could think of was stalling her - that maybe when Eliot got back, they'd find a new angle of argument to try.

"I can see him some other time," Arielle said, sniffing self-importantly and tightening her grip on the bag of her few belongings. There was so much she hadn't bothered to take - little tokens of affection from Eliot and Quentin over the years, gifts and drawings from Teddy. "I want to thank you, Quentin, for everything you've given me in my life. But people move on. They grow apart. It would be best for everyone if you could accept that."

The words were familiar in the worst way. Quentin remembered Arielle, just months ago, assuring Quentin that their divorce was not a sign that their unique and special friendship was breaking. People grow apart, but not them. Not Teddy's parents. "Ari," he said, choked. "Ari, please."

But Arielle was walking out of the clearing and back towards her waiting carriage with determined strides, her head held high. She did not look back. Gulping around a feeling of overwhelming desolation, Quentin brought his hands up, willing them to stop shaking. He created a window with his fingers, studying Arielle's retreating figure in the magical spectrum. There was something. A shimmering, grey aura, floating just around her head. His first ridiculous instinct was to run after her and tell her this - if he could just say _Ari, you're bewitched,_ _this isn't really you_, then suddenly she would snap out of it.

But that was dangerous - if someone, if _Taseer_ that goddamn bastard, was controlling her in some way, then Arielle was an agent of her own imprisonment. He couldn't tip her off, because that would be as good as telling her enchanter that he was on to them. So he watched, his heart in his throat, as the woman who was still legally his wife was helped back up into the carriage. It wheeled around, making a large arc, before it started to roll away back the way it had came. He waited, hoping against hope that Arielle's head would turn, that she'd shoot him a furtive glance, something, _anything_ to tell him that she was still herself, but it didn't happen.

He was still standing there, shell-shocked and aching with pain and worry, when Eliot and Teddy came back from the river. Eliot took one look at him and knew something was wrong, but they didn't have a chance to talk about it right away. Teddy was in a chatty, happy mood, and what with the generally dour atmosphere around the cottage for the past week, there was no way they'd want to do anything to break him out of a rare moment of tranquility.

"I want to color," Teddy announced, a damp towel hanging from his shoulders. He bypassed Quentin and went straight for the table.

"Do I not get a hello?" Quentin asked, offering Eliot the best smile he could manage. Eliot frowned at him, came forward and kissed him on the forehead.

"Hi Daddy," Teddy tossed over his shoulder, pulling a piece of paper towards him and gripping a piece of chalk in his hand with focused determination.

"Yeah, hi Daddy," Eliot echoed quietly into Quentin's ear. Quentin snorted at him but did feel the slightest ease of pressure in his chest at Eliot's gentle teasing.

"Hi," he said, and tilted up to kiss Eliot. For a moment he let the touch ground him, relief infusing every inch of his body at the soft yet firm press of Eliot against him. And then -

"Come watch me!" Teddy was in an imperious sort of mood, and while Quentin was willing to indulge him, Eliot had a slightly firmer hand.

"Did you want to _ask_ us something, little man?"

Teddy frowned, turning fully around to face them with his knees on the bench. "Will you come watch me and color with me?"

"I suppose we could be persuaded," Eliot said, and then smiled at Teddy's confused look. "Yes, Ted, we'll come color with you. Just give us a second, okay?"

"So you can kiss more?" Teddy said disapprovingly. But he did turn back to his drawing and let his fathers have a brief moment or privacy.

"What's up?" Eliot said, voice low.

"Ari was just here," Quentin said back, equally quiet. Eliot's hands, which had been rubbing up and down Quentin's arms, went suddenly still.

"_What_?"

"She's under some sort of a spell," Quentin said. "I don't - I don't know what exactly, but she was being - she was so awful, El, it was like she couldn't be bothered to even talk to me, and she didn't want to wait and see you or Teddy..."

"Shit," Eliot said. "_Shit_, Quentin, what do we do? I mean, if she's up in Whitespire - "

"We can't exactly just go in and demand she comes home with us."

"Are we back to thinking this was Taseer?" Eliot said. Quentin's heart twisted at the look of genuine distress on Eliot's face. He understood the emotion - they'd both liked Taseer so much. Was it really possible that he could be keeping Arielle with him against her will? Had their judgment been so poor?

"I don't know," Quentin said. "Look at it this way - that letter from him was out of character, and Ari's acting _way_ out of character. Maybe both of them are in the same kind of trouble."

"We trusted him with Teddy," Eliot said, his voice wavering. "God, if he - "

"I know," Quentin said. "I know, I'm freaking out. I wish you'd been here, I don't even know how to describe it to you, it was like she wasn't even - she wasn't _Ari. _It was awful."

"Um _hello_," Teddy's voice called from the table. "You're taking too long!"

They were forced to table the conversation. Eliot had always been better at locking up negative emotions than Quentin had been, and he was able to spend a passable twenty minutes with Teddy, coloring his own haphazard drawings and complimenting and helping Teddy with his as well. Quentin was a nearly silent participant, but if Teddy was picking up on any of his distress, he wasn't showing it. At the end of twenty minutes, he had a picture of the whole family.

Teddy held it up for inspection, pointing to each stick figure with determined pride. "That's you, and that's you, and that's me, and this is Mommy. And Taseer. And Gamma and Grampa, and there's Uncle Rodney and Aunt Kasha and - "

Quentin stared at the clumsy stick-figure of Arielle, and felt his throat close entirely up. Fuck. What the fuck was he supposed to do? Teddy had grown accustomed to moving around, of going a few days on occasion without seeing one or more of his parents. But how much longer until he put together that he hadn't seen his mother in a while? How much longer until the occasional questions about her turned to insistent inquiries? How was he meant to tell his son that Arielle had been here and hadn't wanted to see him? He wouldn't tell him that. He couldn't. He had to _fix_ this, but how was he supposed to...

"Q," Eliot's voice was quiet and concerned, and it was this show of tender attention that broke him.

"I - just need - " he stood up, stumbling away from the table and over to the bench. He thought about the look on Arielle's face on their wedding day, and the look on Arielle's face just an hour before, as she'd coldly declared her intention to disappear from his life forever. He thought about how much Teddy had loved traveling with Ari and Taseer, how happy and proud of himself Quentin had been for managing their unconventional family with love and light and stability for Teddy. God, it was too much. He had to have been insane to think he could really _keep_ all of that. After everything he and Eliot had given up for this quest, the idea that they could lead a happy contented life with their family had seemed like well-earned recompense. And now? How was he meant to be Teddy's father without Arielle by his side? He'd worried ceaselessly about what would happen if they solved the mosaic, about what it would mean to be forced away from his son. But he'd always been sure that if nothing else, Ari would be there. Teddy would never lose his mother.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been crying, but he didn't think it had been very long - Eliot was a magnet to his distress, wrapping him up in his arms and letting him lean against his broad chest, as the tears continued to flow. Teddy was still at the table coloring, and Quentin wondered abstractedly what Eliot had told him about why Daddy was upset. "Q," Eliot said, his voice low and distressed against the top of Quentin's head. "We're going to figure this out."

"How?"

"Fuck if I know, but we always do," Eliot said. "_Always, _Q. You and me. We'll figure out what's wrong, and we'll make it better."

"I miss her," Quentin heard himself confess, muffled into Eliot's shirtfront. "I missed her even before this shit started. I feel like such a selfish dick for even saying this but - I wish it could go back to the way it was before she'd met Taseer."

Eliot's hands tightened against his back for a moment, then continued a soothing pattern. "Me too," he said. And Quentin felt instantly, illogically, better to know he wasn't the only one struggling with this. "I'm worried about her," Eliot continued. "I mean, obviously. But it's not just that. It's knowing that no matter what, we're never going back to the three of us living in this cozy little corner, raising our son together."

"Yeah," Quentin said, that same potent mix of misery and fear sweeping over him again. He snuggled his way closer in against Eliot's chest. "I'm sorry I'm wallowing."

"Perfectly understandable," Eliot said at once. "When you're feeling a little better, it'll be my turn."

"Is it lunch time?" Teddy said, calling over from the table. He stood up off the bench and scurried over to them. His eyes were wide with innocent affection as he approached, and he held his arms out to be lifted up. Eliot made to reach for him but Quentin moved faster, lifting up off of Eliot and pulling Teddy into his arms.

"Yeah, it's lunch time," Eliot said, standing up and ruffling first Teddy's hair, then Quentin's. "I'll go get the food started."

When he'd walked away, Teddy squirmed a bit so he was sitting next to Quentin on the bench, looking up at him with a solemnity that reminded Quentin far too much of _himself_. It was like looking at a kindergarten-aged version of Quentin Coldwater. Quentin could only hope, with a desperate sort of longing, that his son's childhood would be happier than his own had been. "Daddy," Teddy said, blinking a few times to impart his seriousness. "Is Mommy coming back?"

Quentin's heart squeezed tight in his chest. "Yes," he said, but the word came out almost angry, and Teddy's mouth turned down.

"Are you lying?"

"No," Quentin said. "No, Teddy, I - listen, it's kind of confusing, okay?"

"Like for grownups?" Teddy said, sounding forlorn.

"Kind of. Yeah. All you need to know is that your mother loves you very much, and she - she'll be here when she can be. Okay?"

Teddy nodded, his expression still somber, but then he stood, wriggling his way off of the bench and holding out a hand to Quentin. "Let's go help Papa with food."

And that much, at least, was simple. Quentin stood and followed his son inside, shoving the darkness inside of him down as low as it would go.


	10. Chapter Ten - In Which Information Emerges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you all enjoy my weird made up Fillory nonsense. I had fun with these ideas, and this chapter really represents the moment where the Fillory stuff goes from being atmospheric details to being integral to the plot. Thanks as always for coming along on this journey with me!

**ELIOT**

Rodney Jr. was the kind of man who was always smiling. It was a boundless enthusiasm that might have annoyed Eliot at an earlier stage of his life. But by the time Ari had introduced them to her eldest brother, Eliot and Quentin had already been together for several months, and his own happiness made other people's happiness far less irritating. Funny how that worked.

Today, Rodney didn't look happy at all. Quentin and Eliot were working on a pattern in a desultory sort of way, with Teddy's less than exuberant assistance, when he came into the clearing. He had a look on his face, a stricken, pained expression, that he tried valiantly to smooth away when he saw his nephew in the clearing.

"Hey, Theodore!" Rodney said, as Teddy looked up and saw him. Teddy's face brightened into a genuine grin and Eliot's heart squeezed tight at the sight of it. Teddy didn't have to know exactly what was going on with his mother to know that he hadn't seen her in a while. It had been too long since he'd seen his son smile.

"Hi Uncle Rod!" Teddy ran forward and Rodney caught him up in his arms. Eliot watched them embrace for a moment and then turned to see Quentin staring at them too, glassy-eyed.

"Teddy, do you want to run inside and bring out a mug for Rodney, so he can have some juice?" Eliot asked when the little boy was back on his own two feet. He ran off, pleased as always to be given a task, and Eliot wasted no time. "What's going on?"

"I saw her," Rodney said at once. "I went up to the castle, I had business there, property documents, and I made an excuse to petition the consul directly."

"And?" Quentin said. The three of them had gravitated towards each other like magnets, heads bent low in conversation.

"After what you said in your first letter, we were all worried, obviously. And then we got a letter from her too, basically saying goodbye. So then I knew something was really wrong. And now that I've seen her... she's not my little sister. Something _awful_ must have happened to her for her to be acting like this."

"Did she talk to you?"

"It was like I was a distant acquaintance, at best," Rodney said. "She barely even looked at me."

"Yeah, that's what it was like for me, too," Quentin said. "She came by, she didn't even want to wait for Ted and El to come back from the river."

"I just thought - you two know her so well," Rodney said. "Better than her own family, if we're being honest. And you know about magic and stuff. I don't know much about that type of thing, but I'm willing to bet..."

"She's bewitched," Quentin said, nodding decisively. "Yeah, that's what we think too."

"So how to we fix her?" Rodney asked, staring between the two of them like he thought they'd smile and produce a magic antidote on the spot.

"We - can't," Eliot said. "Or, if we can, we haven't figured out how yet."

"But - it's _Arielle_," Rodney said, as if this would change their answer.

"We want to help her just as badly as you do," Quentin cut in, his voice trembling. Eliot put a hand on his lower back, an automatic gesture. "Believe me, I'd do anything to bring her back, it's just - we don't even know where to start."

"Well," Rodney said. He was looking between the two of them with an expression that was half helpless, have determined. "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it. The fact is, if anyone has a shot at figuring this out, it's going to be the Children of Earth."

Teddy came scurrying back to them before Eliot had time to pick his jaw up from the floor. For a moment they were all distracted with pouring fresh juice and getting settled around the table, and listening as Teddy told his uncle Rodney a long and repetitive story about the time his scary friend Arnold taught him how to catch a fish with talons instead of with dumb sticks like the humans did. Rodney nodded along and listened indulgently, choosing not to remind Teddy that he'd been the one to bring Ted on the fishing trip with Arnold in the first place. Eliot listened with half an ear to his son's happy babbling, his mind racing. Quentin had a hand on his leg, but it wasn't pure affection or even delightful indecency - it was an anchor, a need to touch. Eliot felt it too. His mind was spinning. Of course Rodney knew that Quentin and Eliot had come from another place. They could hardly keep it a secret from Arielle's family, especially since they'd decided to be so transparent with Teddy from the beginning. Children were not good secret keepers. But the way Rodney had spoken was more than just that. It was like he knew something _more_.

"Hey little man," Eliot said when Teddy had wrapped up his story and turned instead to pour himself another cup of juice. Quentin put out his hands automatically to help him guide the heavy jug. "Let's hold off on more sugar for the moment. It's school time."

Teddy pouted and wobbled his lips, but even Quentin, who was usually helpless in the face of Teddy's begging, was unmoved. The three adults were all just a bit too on edge, and Teddy could clearly sense that he wouldn't be getting his way. He stomped off to go inside to his room, and the second he was out of earshot, Eliot was turning towards Rodney.

"How the _fuck_," he started.

"It's a little obvious, if you know what to look for," Rodney said apologetically. "We've all heard the myths and legends. The four kings and queens, Children of Earth sent to bring Fillory into a time of prosperity. And one time, Arielle let slip something about moving through time. She clammed up about it pretty quick after that, but I put two and two together."

"Have you - " Quentin began, but Rodney put his hand up again to interrupt.

"I haven't told a soul. But I will, if you don't help. I don't care why you're really here, whatever destiny you've got or quest you're on or whatever the hell all this puzzle nonsense is supposed to be. If you're the heroes of legend, you can save my sister. That's all I know and all I care about."

"We're not heroes," Quentin said quickly. Under different circumstances, Eliot might have argued with him - they'd done a lot of frankly heroic stuff in their day, and Quentin was always downplaying his own role in events except when it came to the bad stuff, like killing a god and making all the magic go away. But now wasn't the time to try and boost Quentin's confidence. They had bigger fish to fry.

"We're not miracle workers," Eliot corrected, staring Rodney down. "We want to help Arielle. And we _will_. But it's not going to be easy. Right now, we don't even really know where to start."

This was true - despite his Quentin's determination that they find a way to save Arielle, it was hard to know where they could even begin to search for answers. There was very little that Eliot wouldn't do to save her, of course. Even if she hadn't been Teddy's mother, she was his and Quentin's _best friend_, someone who had gifted them so much during their early years in Fillory. And yet, with a son to take care of, and their ongoing quest to attend to, what steps were they meant to take? They stayed up late into the night, discussing strategy, but short of marching into Whitespire and putting Arielle over their shoulder, they couldn't think of what to do.

"I think I do," Rodney said, staring Eliot and Quentin down with a firm, determined stare. "It's why I'm here." And from his pack, he pulled out a book.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Aunt Rita had always been a bit of an odd figure in their lives. She was technically Arielle's great-aunt, but everyone in the Ashmore clan, including people not really related to her, called her Aunt Rita. She was one of those figures that seemed immortal - a wizened old woman who you couldn't really picture as having ever been a child, the kind that had been an old woman as long as most people could remember, who showed up at all family gatherings as if by magic, without anyone quite understanding how she was getting from place to place.

This was Quentin's first time inside her home, and he had to admit to some surprise.

"I was expecting... lace. Throw-pillows. Pink," Eliot muttered in his ear as they sat on an austere wooden bench, waiting for Aunt Rita and Rodney to come back from the kitchen with the tea. Aunt Rita had a servant who lived in her small cottage with her, but evidently Rita had sent the young woman away to ensure them some privacy.

"That's just what I was thinking," Quentin whispered back. "Although the whole spartan thing might actually match her personality better."

Rita Ashmore did not have the lodgings of a doddering old lady. The inside of her cottage was clean and sparse, with very little in the way of decoration or even splashes of color to break up the utilitarian lines. It was almost... _modern_, in the Earth sense of the word.

Rodney came back into the room with the tea tray, setting it down on the low table in front of the bench where Eliot and Quentin were sitting. Aunt Rita came in after him, and before long the four of them were sitting around the table, sipping awkwardly on weak tea out of plain white china.

"Well," Rita said, looking sternly from Rodney to Eliot to Quentin. "I told you to keep an eye on her, did I not?"

Quentin, who had more or less been expecting this, still felt his blood go cold in his veins. Eliot went rigid next to him, their shoulders bumping together as they slid closer to each other on instinct.

"You knew this would happen, then," Eliot said, voice husky.

"Not exactly," Rita said primly, taking another sip of her tea. She handed the half-full cup wordlessly off to the side, and Rodney took it for her, placing it on the table in front of him. Quentin could see that her hands were shaking slightly. "But I knew from the moment that Arielle was born that she and I had much in common."

Rodney had explained a bit on their way over here. His understanding was that Rita had had premonitions about something befalling Arielle, and had some foreknowledge about what she believed was going to happen. The answers were apparently in the notebook that was now sitting on the table between them. But this declaration didn't quite make sense.

"Explain," Eliot said. Rodney gave him a raised eyebrow at his tone, but kept silent, and Rita seemed a bit too preoccupied to take offense.

"When I was a young woman, I was placed under a terrible curse," she said, as if beginning a story around a campfire. Quentin's focus sharpened. He set his own cup of tea down and leaned forward, eager for every word of Rita's explanation. "A handsome young man came out of nowhere, and wooed me. And - I fell for it, I am ashamed to say."

Quentin thought of Taseer, of the way he laughed at Eliot's jokes and listened to Teddy's stories, the way he brushed the hair out of Arielle's eyes and looked at her with every ounce of tenderness in the world. He felt sick.

"What did he do to her?" Quentin asked, skipping straight to the conclusion that was on everyone's mind.

"I cannot be certain that it was her new lover," Rita said reflectively. "My knowledge of the future is imprecise at best. But if I am right, then our Arielle has had her soul stolen from her."

Quentin had been ready for _possessed_ or _mind controlled_, but something about these specific words was far worse than his worst nightmare. Next to him, Eliot made a sound, like someone had just punched him in the stomach. "What the fuck does that even mean?"

Rodney shot Eliot a look, scandalized by the curse. It was odd to hear bad language in front of someone as prim and proper as Rita, but Quentin was far past chastising him for it. Rita, for her part, seemed completely untroubled by the rough word. She looked at Eliot and Quentin each in turn before answering. "I don't know magic, the way you boys do," she said, with a look shrewd enough that Quentin was immediately convinced that she'd guessed as much as Rodney had. "But from what I understand, from my own experience... if Arielle is without her soul, she is easily controlled by the one who holds it."

"So it's like mind-control," Quentin put in, again trying to shape his mind around the reality of this situation. "Like - someone is telling her what to do and she has to obey."

Rita frowned, but not in disagreement. It was more like she was considering how best to answer. "I had my soul stolen from me when I was a young woman of twenty. I lived without it for a very long time. If it were not for my Bella - " she stopped talking abruptly, and coughed, blinking and fluttering her eyelids a few times. Quentin stared at her. It was the most human he'd ever seen her - vulnerable and sad about something he could not even begin to understand. "Well. What I remember from that time is not the absence of free will, exactly. I felt that the choices I was making were my own. The man who cursed me, he suggested what I should do, and it all seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I had no feeling left inside of me for anything that had once mattered. Why should I do otherwise than what he wanted?"

Quentin thought of Taseer, his smiling eyes, his charisma, the way he'd so naturally slotted into their lives. He thought of Taseer suggesting things to Arielle, telling her that her life back home was an embarrassment to him, and Arielle nodding, agreeing, because her capacity to feel love for her family had been stolen from her. He felt sick. He looked at Eliot, and blinked at the expression on his face. He'd been expecting a mirror of the horror he himself was feeling, but instead he looked contemplative, as he regarded Rita across the space between the benches.

"Who's Bella?" Eliot asked.

Rita's expression softened. Her eyelids fluttered again. Quentin's heart clenched in primal sympathy, even before his brain had caught up with the possible implication. "Bella was... she was to me what I believe Mr. Coldwater is to you," she said, nodding her head to Eliot. "What you are to each other. I was young and foolish, and could not recognize my own good fortune in such a one as her. When my soul was taken from me, it was Bella who endeavored to free me." She reached forward a somewhat gnarled hand and rapped it against the book that Rodney had shown them back at the cottage. "As it says in here, the soul-stealing magic can only be broken by those who are true of heart. She was certainly that."

"What happened to her?" Eliot asked. Quentin very nearly kicked him in the ankle, because surely the answer to that question was obvious. But when he looked up again at his partner, he found that Eliot still had that contemplative expression on his face. There was a line of tension too, one that Quentin couldn't quite place - but evidently Rita could, because she gifted him a small yet genuine smile.

"Oh, no, Mr. Waugh," Rita said. "There is no need for sympathy, my story is not a tragedy. Bella rescued me. She had help - my brother." She turned to look at Rodney. "That would be your great-great uncle, dear - he and Bella went through many difficulties, and in the end they were able to rescue me. Bella is gone from this world now, but we had many happy years together."

Quentin's brain was operating on two different levels. The first was idly wondering just how old Aunt Rita was - Arielle had told them about her family, and she'd never mentioned Rita having a partner of any kind. If Bella died before Ari was born...

The other half of his brain was realizing that he was about to go on a quest. If Rita's brother and Bella were able to go on a mission to rescue her, and if the same thing had happened to Arielle, that meant she could be rescued. And this notebook had the answers. There were still questions to be asked, though. "How can you be certain that what happened to you is the same as what happened to Arielle?"

Rita had gone gentle and nearly kind while talking about Bella, but she sharpened again at once and pinned Quentin with a glare. "I have told you. While I may not understand magic in the same way that you do, I still have abilities of my own. I have known that Arielle was fated to walk a path similar to my own journey. And now she is gone, and if what you and young Rodney say is true, the truth seems unassailable."

"Okay," Eliot said slowly. "Okay, say that's true. Why wouldn't you have warned us? When Taseer turned up?"

Rita's eyebrows drew together, a sharp and uncertain line dashing across her wrinkled old forehead. "I did not sense danger from him. I was certain - I was certain it could not be him."

Quentin looked over at Eliot to find him staring back. Everything they'd been told thus far made it seem pretty clear that Taseer was the bad guy, so to speak. If a handsome stranger had shown up and seduced Rita away from a happy life, and she'd been sure the same thing would happen to Arielle, there was really only one possible conclusion.

"This is all very interesting," Rodney said, speaking for the first time in quite a while. "But the point is, this is the only theory we've got. The real question we need to be asking is - can you do it?" he nodded again at the notebook and Quentin picked it up, flipping through its pages. He and Eliot had looked through it on their way over to Rita's house. It was a mix of diary and instruction, pages and pages of notes and lists of ingredients. Powerful spell-work was required for some parts of it, while other parts were more akin to a scavenger hunt. Certain ingredients needed to be collected, and then made as offerings, in order to return the soul to its rightful owner.

Quentin's finger caught on one of the pages, where the circumstances for a spell were written out. This was early in the book - instructions for how to make special jars with magical protections, for each ingredient to rest in until the moment they could be combined. "How did they do all of this?" Quentin asked. "To save you, I mean. Did your brother or Bella have magic?"

"You'd need real training to pull some of this off," Eliot added.

Rita gave a tired little sigh. "Bella and my brother Rodney had no magic to speak of. Their quest was orders of magnitude more difficult than your own will be. They were forced to trade and beg for the magic assistance they needed, from persons and beings less than generous with their gifts."

"So then if they could do it," Rodney said, a bit of his customary eagerness infusing his tone, "then two well-trained magicians should be able to manage it, no problem."

Quentin and Eliot exchanged another glance. They needed to talk this through, away from Rita and Rodney's company. But for Quentin's part, he could already feel something akin to excitement thrumming in his veins. The quest outlined in this notebook, the magic involved, was complicated and dangerous. It was less than ideal to think about leaving the cottage, leaving Teddy, to run off into the woods tracking down magical creatures, hunting for ingredients of magical potency, all on the off chance that what Aunt Rita was telling them was the truth, and they'd be able to save Arielle in the end. But on the other hand, he'd felt like he was wading through quicksand for weeks now, his brain a whirl of panic and ennui all at once. And this was - _something_. It wasn't all of the answers, but it was a place to start. He could act on this. He could take steps, and hope that they lead him somewhere. And as much as their odds seemed less than ideal at the moment, just the suggestion of progress was invigorating.

* * *

"Do you see what's on the list of ingredients?" Eliot asked as they exited Rita's house some time later. Rodney had stayed with his aunt, leaving the two of them to walk back towards the main Ashmore estate to collect Teddy before heading home.

"Water, earth, fire, air," Quentin said. "Very _Avatar_."

"What?" Eliot said, scrunching his nose up.

"Never mind," Quentin said, rolling his eyes. "Yes, I read it." Then he paused, looking over at Eliot as Eliot flipped through the notebook, his finger tracing down the page. "What?"

"The feather of a giant eagle," he said. "For the _air_ part, we need three feathers, from three different birds. One of them is a giant eagle."

"Arnold."

"Yep. And the _water_ ingredient is a piece of cake. Water from a river that grants healing to all who bathe in its waters."

"Chatwin's Torrent," Quentin said. "Of course, it's not called that yet. Yeah, I noticed that too."

"Should we go see Arnold, before we pick up the kiddo?"

"Just like that?" Quentin asked, startled for some reason he could not really explain.

"What's the point of waiting?"

"We have to make the magic jars, for one thing," Quentin said. Frowning, he pulled the book out of Eliot's hand and flipped back to an earlier page, staring down at the spell-work. "That part looks easy enough, just kind of time-consuming."

"Okay, so... Arnold. Teddy. Jars. Quest?" Eliot said. Quentin, despite the thousands of complicated emotions running through him, had to smile at Eliot's list-making. It was Quentin's coping mechanism, one that Eliot had picked up from him years ago. He put a hand on Eliot's arm to stop his stride, and Eliot turned to him.

"Yes," Quentin said. "We're getting her back." He reached up to kiss Eliot, and Eliot tilted to meet him.

"Is it weird that I'm feeling really confident about this right now?" Eliot asked, reaching for Quentin's hand. They turned, adjusting their course. It was a couple of miles to Arnold's treetop home near the edge of the valley, but for some reason, Quentin didn't feel like he was in a hurry.

"No, I feel it too," Quentin said. "I mean, it's obviously a false high, but just - new information. New leads. It's _something_."

"I miss her so much," Eliot said, and Quentin's heart squeezed tight in his chest. They had been talking around the issue recently - partly to keep Teddy from worrying, and partly to keep themselves focused on answers instead of emotions. But now, now that they _had_ some answers, however vague, it was like a pressure valve had been released.

"God, me too. It will be good to have her home."

Eliot squeezed his hand hard in his, and Quentin felt the line of tension pass from Eliot into him. He realized why a second later. Even if they managed to pull this off, there was the Taseer question to deal with. If he really was the villain behind Arielle's pseudo-imprisonment, then Arielle _would_ come home with them, most likely. Their lives would resume a familiar pattern, one that Quentin craved desperately. But Ari hadn't been totally happy, then. It was clear as day, once she'd introduced them all to Taseer, that Arielle wanted companionship, wanted a partner in life the way Quentin and Eliot had found in each other. They could pull this off, save the day, reunite with Arielle and bring their broken family back together - but things would never be as they were.

"It will be," Eliot answered him, after a too-long pause. "Or at the very least, it will be good to have her back in our lives."

They walked in silence for a long time, Eliot white-knuckling the book in one hand, and Quentin's hand in the other.

* * *

"It grieves me to refuse you," Arnold said gravely. Quentin hadn't thought that a bird's face was capable of appearing sheepish, but that was the only word he could think of to describe the tilt to Arnold's head, the way his feathers were bunched up in an almost defensive array.

"You won't give us a feather?" Eliot said. He sounded incredulous, bordering on angry, and Quentin followed his gaze down to the ground beneath the copse of trees, where there were at least three feathers resting among the general debris. "Care to explain why?"

"El," Quentin said, low and warning. "Um. Arnold, we apologize if the request is rude, we just - we need it for - "

"To rescue your wife," Arnold interrupted. "Yes, I know. I recognize the book you hold in your hands. It is the same one the others carried, when they asked me for the same favor."

Quentin gaped up at the giant bird. He barely caught himself from asking, rudely, _how old are you_? But there was another question, maybe no less rude, but far more important: "But you gave it to them, didn't you? To rescue Rita? So why can't we have it?"

If Arnold had had lips, he would have pursed them. "The quest you plan on undertaking is much more complex than it might first appear. I could give you one of my feathers right now, but it would do you no good. The magics involved in undertaking such a thing require sacrifices. You motivations must be pure, your hearts true - "

"But what does that _mean_?" Eliot asked, exasperation plain in his voice now. Quentin looked down at a page in the book where the spell's ingredients were listed. Next to the line about feathers, there was a scrawled note that said 'demonstration of devotion.'

"We have to - demonstrate our devotion?" Quentin asked, looking up at Arnold with his eyebrows raised. "To what? To Arielle? To the quest? Because we're _devoted_. Believe me. There's very little we wouldn't do to put this right."

Arnold just blinked down at them both. "I wish very much for you to succeed," he said, his voice grave. "And I hope to be able to help you. But I can't give you one of my feathers at this time."

And that, apparently, was that. Arnold invited them to come inside, which was always a fun experience that involved tree-climbing and a spectacular view, and the half-cute half-terrifying sight of giant youngsters in the nest, depending on the time of year. But Quentin didn't need to discuss anything with Eliot to know that they were both anxious to get back to Teddy. With some difficulty, they said polite goodbyes and headed off. There was a lot that Quentin wanted to discuss with Eliot - plans for next steps, analysis of Arnold's behavior, but Eliot wasn't in the mood to talk. It was clear as day in the set of his shoulders, the clench of his jaw. Before speaking to Arnold, they'd both been so optimistic. Quentin was still in that head-space, invigorated by just the suggestion of progress. But he was losing Eliot to doubt.

"El," Quentin said. "It'll be..."

"Okay?" Eliot finished, when Quentin trailed off. He offered a tired smile. "Maybe. Let's just go get our son. I want to go home."

Quentin reached down for Eliot's hand and they walked back towards the Ashmore farm with their fingers tangled together, each lost in thought about what lay ahead.

* * *

**ELIOT**

Back at the cottage, Eliot found himself rifling through the pages of the book with increasing concern. He'd tried to stay in that space of sudden optimism with Quentin, but his brief moment of hope had drained out of him on the return journey, and the more he read through Bella's journal, the less enthused he felt. The account was extremely detailed in some places, ominously vague in others. The map was hand-drawn but seemed to be accurate as far as they could tell, comparing it to the maps on offer in Langdale, one of which Eliot had purchased for Quentin for his birthday the previous year. The ingredients were listed helpfully together on one page, the ink dark and bold like it had been traced over many times. Surrounding the bold ingredients were notes, scribbled in less precise handwriting, some bits underlined for emphasis.

\- **Water from the river which heals all who enter.** (Watcher. Important for later).  
**\- Earth cradled beneath the roots of the sacred tree.** (Dryads of violet woodlands?)  
\- **Air - a feather from Eagle, Owl, Phoenix** (demonstration of devotion)  
\- **Fire - from the hearth of the blood witch **(time??)

There were so many things just in the list of ingredients that gave him pause. What the hell was a _blood witch_, for one thing? And what sort of "demonstration of devotion" were they meant to show, in order to earn the feathers?

The journal contained meticulously detailed accounts of the journey, long sections where Bella poured her heart out to the page, aching for Rita and desperate for progress. But it could not be any clearer that this book was meant as a resource for Bella and the original Rodney Ashmore, and not an instruction manual for anyone else who might attempt the same thing later. The details of the spells were luckily precise and complete, the location of each ingredient clearly laid out. But important details like what exactly the process was for collecting said ingredients were left frustratingly vague.

"He's finally asleep," Quentin said. "I think Grandpa fed him sugar as an act of subtle revenge against us for losing his daughter."

Quentin walked out of Teddy's room with a tired smile on his face, and Eliot smiled back at him at the somewhat morbid joke. "You look awful, Q."

"Oh, sailor, take me away," Quentin said with an exaggerated eye-roll, coming forward to stand between Eliot's knees. He tilted down until their foreheads were touching. "That's no way to get lucky."

Eliot thought for a moment about letting Quentin's out-of-place good mood sweep him away. It would be the easiest thing in the world to set the notebook aside and pull Quentin down into his lap. They'd long since perfected the art of staying quiet when they needed to, and in the stress of the last few weeks, it had actually been awhile since they'd made a real thorough go of it. He curved his hands around Quentin's waist and tugged him in a little closer, but then sighed, burying his face in Quentin's stomach. "Q, what the fuck are we doing?"

"Um. That was my subtle attempt at seduction," Quentin answered, a tad confused.

"No, I mean - " Eliot looked up at him. "All of this - this _quest_, this whole idea... we're basing this entire thing off of Rita's crazy story, and even if she _is_ right..." he trailed off. "It's a lot. It's a _lot_."

Quentin slid into Eliot's lap then, without prompting. But it was no longer foreplay. Eliot hugged him tight for a second, waiting for Quentin to process his thoughts. Finally, he answered.

"You don't think we should go?" Quentin said. He sounded both firm and uncertain all at the same time, and Eliot bunched his shirt up in his hands for a moment before relaxing them, taking a purposeful slow breath before responding.

"Of _course_ we should go," Eliot said. "I'm just wanting us to have one of those serious conversation things before we do. It's a lot. Leaving - leaving Teddy, leaving our quest."

"We're not leaving either one of those things," Quentin said, pulling back and tilting so that Eliot's arms were the only things stopping him from toppling off of the chair and onto the floor. "Teddy will be staying with family, and as for the quest... well, this is just - another quest. A quest _within_ a quest. Russian nesting dolls."

"Russian _questing _dolls," Eliot said, an automatic reflex.

Quentin slapped his arm but he smiled, an actual, genuine smile, and Eliot's heart soared. "El, be serious."

"I am. I want to go. I want to rescue Arielle. Obviously. But we have to be realistic about the fact that it could take us a long time. And Teddy..."

Quentin frowned, the brief spark of amusement vanishing as quickly as it had come. "He'll be okay with his grandparents."

"Will you be okay without him?" Eliot asked, trying to stay pragmatic. "Because I don't know if I will be."

Quentin was silent for a long moment, biting his lip and looking over Eliot's shoulder, like he could see through the door behind him and behold his son, sleeping warm and safe in his bed, trusting in the love and security of a happy home. "I wouldn't say _okay_. But I think - how are we going to look him in the eye, ten years from now, and tell him we had a shot at saving his mother and we didn't take it?"

"You're right. And I know that. It's just - "

"A lot?" Quentin said, a hint of a smile in his voice. "So I've heard."

"You know what I really want to do right now?" Eliot said. "I want to pick you up and carry you to bed but I think I'm too tired to pull that off gracefully."

Quentin let out a laugh that was almost too loud, then buried his face in Eliot's neck to muffle it. "El, honey, did you forget you have a way to cheat?"

"Oh, yeah." It was the work of moments to use his telekinesis to take the bulk of Quentin's weight, and then stand up with him. Just that simple motion made him feel powerful, in control in a way that centered and ordered his thoughts and erased the tendrils of doubt from his mind, at least for the moment.

"Smooth," Quentin said, and his voice had gone low, despite the obvious teasing lilt to it. He wrapped his arms tight around Eliot's shoulders and kissed him, slow and warm and precious, and even with the help of magic, Eliot felt his knees go weak.

There were so many things in Eliot's life right now that were _urgent_. He felt the desperate worry for Arielle threatening to swamp up and over him every second. His brain was full of questions about this insane task they'd set for themselves. He worried for Teddy. Thoughts of Taseer's likely betrayal made his stomach churn. The ever-burning grief of his missing family back in his own time seemed sharper when placed next to the threat to his newer family here.

But it was shockingly easy to ignore all of that urgency when he was in bed with Quentin, their skin sliding against one another, their kisses deep and endless. "Q," Eliot whispered against his ear. "I want you." Quentin didn't need to be told what that meant. He smiled, nudging Eliot's face up with his own so he could reconnect their lips, then rolled them over so he was pinning Eliot to the bed.

"Yeah?" he said, against his lips.

"Please."

Quentin shivered. God, he was so easy sometimes. He had only moments to feel smug about it, though, because Quentin was twisting his hands in a familiar set of tuts, and then his hand was on Eliot's half-hard cock, wet with lube, stroking firm and steady. He let a small punched-out moan escape his lips, then bit back on a second one when Quentin shushed him, increasing the pressure of his hand and kissing him again, curling their tongues together and then fucking into his mouth in time with his movements lower down.

He kept it up for an aggravatingly long time, until Eliot couldn't stop his hips from twitching upward into the pressure, his breathing long since gone hoarse and shallow. He wanted to reciprocate, but his arms felt like lead where they lay still against the bed - and anyway, he knew what they were both in the mood for tonight. How many nights had Eliot laid Quentin out on this very bed and taken his time, worshiping every inch of skin, teasing out sounds of pleasure and longing from the man he loved more than life itself? He loved taking care of Quentin in a way he didn't know how to put into words. And Quentin loved being taken care of. But every once in a while...

"God, Q," Eliot said. "If you don't stop - "

"I have no intention of stopping," Quentin whispered back at him. But he did for a moment, stilling the motion of his hands and squeezing around the base of Eliot's now fully-hard cock. He moved his lips down the column of Eliot's throat, finding the spot that never failed to drive him wild. He suckled and bit at the vulnerable skin there for a moment, and then gave Eliot's cock a parting squeeze before moving his fingers lower. He repeated the tuts, gathering more wetness on his fingers and just teasing against Eliot's hole, not pressing in, light circles again and again, taking his time - _torturing _him, the bastard... Eliot felt lightheaded, his breathing thin and his chest heavy.

"_Q_, come on."

Quentin chuckled, low and evil, and finally did as Eliot asked. For a while his brain drifted outside of his body, nothing coherent piercing through a general cloud of sensation. Quentin kissed Eliot while he fingered him open, slow and smooth. Then he moved lower, laving at each of his nipples, pressing light kisses against his chest, his stomach, lower - Eliot's back bowed up involuntarily when Quentin mouthed at the head of his cock, bobbing his head down a few times and then removing himself before Eliot could sink into the delirious rhythm of it. And then, just when Eliot was wondering if Quentin was actually going to make him beg, Quentin removed his hand, slid up Eliot's body to kiss him again, and then lined himself up.

"You okay?" he asked, and for all his suave confidence, Eliot was happy to note a waver of desperation in his voice.

"I will be in a second," Eliot said, blinking madly to try and keep Quentin in focus. "Fuck me."

"Okay, if you say so," Quentin said, and pressed himself forward, sliding in. Eliot was well-prepared, and Quentin sank straight in until he was fully inside, a low, nearly pained sound escaping from him as he did so. For a moment he was still, and Eliot was content to let him stay that way, letting the feeling of being filled sink into him, every one of his nerve endings on fire. His own cock was hard against his stomach, but he felt no real need for friction, content to let Quentin get him there in his own time. Eventually, Quentin let out a soft sigh and moved out, then back in. Slow. Perfect. Gentle. And then he picked up the pace, adjusting his angle, until -

"Oh, _fuck_," Eliot said, and one of Quentin's hands shot up to cover Eliot's mouth.

"Be quiet," he said, but any attempt at firmness in his tone went out the window when Eliot shoved his hips down, pushing Quentin deeper inside in perfect timing with his escalating thrust. "_Fuck_, El."

"Yeah, that's what I said," Eliot retorted, and Quentin's breathy laughter in response was the best sound Eliot had heard all day.

For a while after that there was no talking, just Quentin's perfect rhythm, picking up the pace, the slick slide of their lips against one another and Quentin ducked to kiss him, increasingly aggressive and frantic the longer they went on. It felt like no time had passed, and also like Quentin had always been inside of him, an unending swell of emotion and sensation that battered against and through Eliot's body and mind. He had no idea how long it had been when he felt his orgasm coming on. He could tell Quentin was right on the edge, too - his hips had started snapping forward hard enough that Eliot could hear the sharp slap of their skin hitting on each impact. "Tell me you're close," Quentin said, strangled, his breath hot against the skin of Eliot's cheek.

Eliot tried to answer him and succeeded only in letting out a wordless moan. He supposed that was answer enough, because one of Quentin's hands fumbled down between them and grabbed onto his cock. The sudden friction was _heaven_, and Quentin had only pulled on him a few rough, clumsy times before he was coming, spilling wet over Quentin's fist and drowning in the choked off sounds of desire Quentin was making above him.

"Come on, baby," Eliot slurred as he came down off the edge. He pulled on Quentin weakly, his arms shaking. "Come for me, I want you to - please Q, come on - "

"_Fuck, fuck - _I'm - " Quentin lunged forward to reach Eliot's lips, kissing him deeply as his orgasm overtook him. Eliot felt him pulsing inside and groaned against Quentin's lips, aftershocks shivering along his limbs and up through his chest.

"So much for keeping quiet," Eliot said a few moments later. Quentin was still inside of him, a limp dead weight against his chest. He wouldn't have moved him for the world.

"Shit," Quentin murmured into his neck. "Do you hear him?"

"No, I think we're good," Eliot said, running a hand gently up and down Quentin's spine.

"I'm crushing you," Quentin observed mildly, without moving.

"Oh, sure," Eliot agreed. "I'm going to suffocate at any moment."

"El - "

"But what a way to go," Eliot said, drowsy and jovial. Fuck, if sex didn't make everything just a little bit brighter.

"You think you're so funny," Quentin said, and then groaned as he moved, levering himself up and letting himself slip out of Eliot. He kissed Eliot on the nose in apology at Eliot's small huff of pain. Q's hands moved in a series of tuts and they were dry, and then Quentin flopped himself back down, still half on top of Eliot.

"Hey Q?"

"Mmm."

"That was really fucking good."

Quentin laughed quietly against his chest. "Glad to be of service."

"This is where a normal person might return the compliment," Eliot observed, reaching a hand down to pinch Quentin's waist. He squirmed for a moment but then settled back down, turning his face into Eliot's chest to place a kiss there.

"You were okay."

"You are so full of shit," Eliot said, impossibly fond.

"And yet you love me," Quentin said, already half asleep.

"And yet I love you," Eliot echoed, following him down into the warm embrace of slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's your favorite moment/aspect of the chapter? :)


	11. Chapter Eleven - In Which Preparations Occur and a Quest Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A-questing we will gooooo....
> 
> Thank you all so much for sticking with me!

**ELIOT**

Despite Eliot's lingering doubts, it did feel good to have a goal. There was plenty to do before they could actually set off on their quest to save Arielle, not the least of which was to confirm that Rita's theory was actually correct. It had been tricky to pull off, but he and Quentin had managed to work backwards from the spell-work in Bella's journal. They enchanted a bracelet and gave it to Rodney, who was able to finagle another excuse to get into Whitespire and near his sister. If Arielle was specifically cursed the way Rita had been, the bracelet would glow when within a certain radius of her.

While Rodney was away getting them their confirmation, Quentin and Eliot started to prepare. There were the more mundane concerns, like studying the map, planning their route, filling Mr. and Mrs. Ashmore in on what they were doing, arranging for Teddy to stay with them for what could end up being several weeks, if not months. They had to decide what to pack, how to minimize their supplies for a long journey. Eliot shuddered dramatically at the mention of camping gear, only half joking. Obviously there was a lot that was less than ideal about their upcoming adventure, but sleeping outdoors was honestly pretty high on the list for Eliot.

Quentin had actually found a clever solution for some of their packing woes. "Hey, check this out," he said. He had one of the packs they'd bought in Langdale laid out on the table. He twisted his fingers together in an intricate and unfamiliar pattern, and the pack shrunk, going from over-sized and bulky to nothing more than a small satchel. "I made us a bag of holding."

"You - holy shit, Q. That's some impressive magic."

Quentin smiled at him with so much joy that Eliot wondered if he needed to be complimenting him more often. "Yeah, so I modified it so that the bag itself gets smaller and all the stuff inside of it does, too. So then when you do the reverse, the bag gets bigger and all the stuff inside is still intact. It solves our storage problem."

Eliot had to kiss him. "You're the perfect man, Coldwater. Now we can go glamping." And he'd gleefully started adding extra blankets and pillows to the packing list, along with a few other things that Quentin insisted were luxuries, and that Eliot now classified as necessities given the additional storage space.

Still, even that breakthrough didn't grant them unlimited space, and there were other challenges awaiting them as well. For one thing, before they could even begin to collect the ingredients, they needed to enchant four glass jars to hold their magical properties in a seal until the final spell was ready to go. The magic was complex and intricate but different from anything they would have learned at Brakebills, leaving them to wonder fruitlessly who the hell had come up with the spells, and who had enchanted the jars for Bella and the original Rodney, back in the day. Eliot supposed they'd have to keep wondering; whoever it was, they hadn't popped out of the woods and conveniently offered a repeat performance.

Creating the jars was exhausting, no less so because they had to have total, uninterrupted concentration to cast the intricate home-brewed spell-work, meaning they couldn't really get started on any of them until after Teddy was asleep each night. It might have been easier to drop Teddy off at the farm and work on the magic during the day, but neither Quentin nor Eliot was going to suggest such a thing, not when they were about to be parted from their son for who knew how long, all in the service of bringing his mother back home.

It made for late nights, and frustrated starts and stops if Teddy woke up, something he was doing more and more often as his grief for his missing mother escalated. It made for very little progress on the mosaic, as Eliot couldn't really bring himself to care about their lifelong mission when there was something that felt so much more urgent to attend to. Sometimes, while he was making lunch and talking with Teddy, or making lists of supplies for their impending journey, his eye would catch on the mosaic in the background and he'd feel a tinge of guilt for neglecting it. The guilt always took the shape of Margo, of Fen, of everyone from their lives before that they had all but abandoned for the new world they'd built here.

But then Eliot would think of Arielle. He'd think of the way her face went red even when she wasn't really embarrassed. The glint in her eye when she'd come up with a brilliant verbal jab. The sweet sight of her wandering into the clearing with a basket of fruit tilted against her hip. The way she was with Teddy, so endlessly patient, so effortlessly mothering. And the way she was in bed, generous and demanding in equal measure, so eager to give and receive.

Arielle was his priority. Arielle, Quentin, Teddy. He had to save her, for them. For himself. For her. No matter the cost.

They had set a departure date for the end of the following week, giving themselves plenty of time to plan and prepare. There was an odd duality inside of Eliot - eagerness to get on the road, to start making progress, and also reluctance to leave the bubble of safety and happiness he and Quentin had made for themselves here. He could turn 360 degrees in the clearing in front of their cottage and see the place where he and Quentin had kissed for the (almost) first time. He could see the bench where Ari had sat when she told them she was pregnant. The place right next to the vegetable garden where Teddy had taken his first steps. This was home to him, more than Castle Whitespire, more than the Physical Kids Cottage, certainly more than any place he'd lived before that.

Eliot looked up from the list he was making of camping gear, and caught sight of Quentin and Teddy curled up together in the daybed. Quentin had said something about going in to put Teddy down for a nap, but this was better, honestly - as little sleep as Eliot had been getting, he was pretty sure Quentin was getting even less. He put a blanket over the two of them and looked down for a moment, into their adorable and similar faces. His chest was tight, and he very nearly gave up on what he was doing and curled up in the bed with them. What a relief it would be to close his eyes, to let unconsciousness erase his fear of what they were facing.

The sound of hooves clomping down the path made his mind up for him, though. He left Q and Teddy asleep and rushed over to stall the visitor so they wouldn't wake them up. It was Rodney, and one look at his face told Eliot all he needed to know. He tossed down the enchanted bracelet to Eliot, who caught it with a nod.

"So that's it then," he said. "Arielle needs us."

Rodney dismounted from the horse and gave him a nod in return. "Do you want me to come with you?"

Eliot made sure to school his face into a solemn expression, worthy of the gravitas of what Rodney was offering. It actually would not have sucked to have a third person along, but Rodney didn't know magic. Rodney was a farmer, a husband, a father of two. "I appreciate it," Eliot said, careful. "But I think me and Quentin have to go this one alone."

"You two are never alone, you've got each other," Rodney said, like it was that simple. Maybe it was.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

They were leaving in two days. Every waking moment was dedicated to packing and planning and list-making. Three of the four jars were done being enchanted, with the fourth almost completed. They'd mapped out their route. They'd talked to Teddy, told him the child-friendly version about what they were about to do. At the moment, Eliot was working on the enchantment for one of the ingredient jars, while Quentin laid out some of their smaller supplies on the table, cataloging everything and cross-checking it against their list. He was in a foul temper. He was anxious to leave and also desperate to stay forever. The looming goodbye with Teddy was making his stomach churn. The casting of the jars was exhausting work. He was hungry. He and Eliot hadn't had sex in a week. Everything was shitty. He wanted Arielle to walk out of the forest right the fuck now and tell him  _ never mind, all good. I saved myself, I don't need no man. _

"We're going on a walk," Eliot announced, coming over out of the blue and taking a handful of dried rations out of Quentin's hand.

"I'm working on - "

"Nope. We're going on a walk. We're getting some fresh air, we're giving our brains a  _ break _ ."

"Did you fuck up the casting again?" Quentin asked, looking back down at the ration packs and continuing his count.

"I didn't fuck it up," Eliot said. "You were supposed to be there to tag me out if my hands started shaking - "

"You said you had it!" Quentin said. "Jesus, El."

"This is why we're going for a walk," Eliot said. "I'm fucking sick of getting snapped at."

"You don't think we're going to get enough walking on our upcoming hike-slash-quest? And did you forget we've got a six-year-old running around here somewhere?"

"Doady's here, I already asked him to watch Ted," Eliot said, with an eye-roll. "We're both short-tempered. Let's go have tea with a bear."

Quentin opened his mouth to argue, but caught sight of the expression on Eliot's face. He was a little pale, his eyes wide and imploring, and his hands were shaking just a bit.

"El."

"I'm fine," Eliot bit back, and then blinked, his shoulders drooping. "I'm pissy. So are you."

"Yeah," Quentin said, reaching a hand out and taking one of Eliot's in both of his own. He started massaging at his palm, and Eliot went boneless, tilting forward into Quentin in a move that was half-hug, half collapse. He let out a little moan, and Quentin's heart twitched. Eliot was the better magician. He'd been taking on most of the heavy spell-work to enchant the jars. And Quentin had been too caught up in his own head to pay attention. "Okay, let's go for a walk."

The nice thing about being with someone for years on end was that you didn't have to say every apology out loud. Communication was made up of more than just endless conversations. They hadn't gotten in to a big blow-out fight, so there was therefore no need to go over it all with words. Instead, Quentin could hold Eliot's hand in his and massage his thumb into the ball of Eliot's palm, and Eliot could smile at him, and that was enough to say everything.

Ostrich seemed pleased to see them. He was getting on in years, and didn't get out as much as he used to, so visitors were always welcome. And, as it turned out, they had a lot to catch him up on. After Quentin finished describing their upcoming quest to the bear over a pot of tea, Ostrich was quiet for a long time. It was always trickier to read a talking animal's expression and mood, but Quentin had known Ostrich for long enough to sense his distress.

"You leave soon?" he asked.

"In two days," Eliot said.

"You will be careful," Ostrich said. "Nature quests are more than they seem."

Quentin looked over at Eliot to find him looking back, with a quirked eyebrow. They had both read Bella's notebook backwards and forwards. She'd used those words a couple of times - that things were more than they seemed, that there were bigger motivations at play.

"What does that mean, exactly?" Quentin asked Ostrich, nervous.

"I cannot say," Ostrich said. "I cannot tell you much, it is forbidden."

And now Quentin's slight wariness had sharpened into real alarm. "What do you - you can't tell us? You - know about this?"

Ostrich tilted his head back and forth, seemingly uncertain about how to proceed. "Such things are known to us," he finally said, aggravatingly unclear.

Quentin shot a look at Eliot, who shrugged but nevertheless took his own turn, clearing his throat and trying again. "Um. Ostrich. We understand that you can't tell us, even if we don't understand why. But is there anything you might be able to say to us at all? Any... warnings?"

Ostrich made a rumbling sound low in his chest, and then blinked mournfully at Eliot. "You must be true of heart," he said. "The quest will test your determination, and it is not what it seems."

All three of those useless, vague sentiments had been expressed to them already. By Arnold. By Rita. By Bella's diary. Quentin tried to hide his frustration. "Okay. Nothing more specific?"

Ostrich shook his large head, and asked them if they wanted more tea.

* * *

"Feel better now?" Eliot asked, an odd note to his voice. Try as they both might, they couldn't get Ostrich to say anything else about the quest. They'd had tea with him, strained and awkward and desperate for clarity, but had left with nothing.

"Um, not really?" Quentin said, and then startled when Eliot let out a chuckle. They were walking back through the woods towards home, and Quentin could already feel the tell-tale longing to return to his son, pulling on him more and more as they walked. Being away from Teddy was never exactly fun, but with their impending departure right around the bend, he found himself possessive of every second they had left.

"Fair enough," Eliot said. "Sorry. I was trying to give us a break, not more things to worry about."

"Will you tell me what you're thinking?" Quentin said. He couldn't quite place Eliot's tone. He seemed mostly calm, with just the edge of  _ something _ coloring every word. He didn't seem unduly agitated, though, the way Quentin was feeling.

"I'm thinking that I actually feel pretty good about this," Eliot said, which was about the last thing Quentin had expected to hear. "I mean - obviously I don't relish whatever we've got to face, but... I don't know. We've faced a lot worse, and it kind of seems like..." he trailed off, tilting his head back and forth like he was searching for words.

"Like what?"

"Like the spell wants us to succeed?"

"Okay - what?" Quentin blinked at him, squinting at his face in the dim forest light. "Were we having the same conversation back there?"

Eliot laughed, bumping into his shoulder slightly. "I don't mean that it'll be easy. Frankly I'm petrified that something awful is going to happen and one of us will get hurt. But just - comparing this to the other quest we're on, it just seems more doable."

"Sure," Quentin said. "More doable than returning magic to the land after I fucked it up for everyone."

Eliot's hand came up and squeezed the back of his neck, comfort mixed with warning. He hated it when Quentin started blaming himself for the loss of magic, as if it had been a personal decision and not a group effort. "Q."

"Sorry," Quentin said, cutting off the lecture. "I just mean - easier is a relative term. Ostrich wasn't telling us that this was going to be easy. Quite the opposite."

"Ember and Umber," Eliot said, an apparent non-sequitur that left Quentin reeling. "They abandoned Fillory, right? Or at least they abandoned it as anything more than a mild amusement. The quest to get magic back is... without sign posts. Sure, we've done alright for ourselves here, but it's not like a handy NPC is floating in the corner of the screen to tell us that we're getting closer to discovering the beauty of all life."

"NPC?" Quentin said, grinning. "You don't even play RPGs."

"I've learned this shit through osmosis. Comes from living with a nerd for a decade. My point is, everything we've heard about this quest seems a lot more guided. Like the people and creatures we'll encounter on the way are going to be actually helpful and communicative."

"They're going to 'test our determination'," Quentin quoted, remembering Ostrich's words. "That doesn't sound scary to you?"

"Oh, sure," Eliot said, his mouth twisting up into a half-smile. Quentin almost walked into a tree-branch because he was looking up at him, instead of at the path. "Scary. But not aimless. I think that's been the hardest part of the past few weeks for me, before Rodney turned up with that notebook. I knew there was a problem, I knew I should fix it, but I didn't have even a hint of an idea of how to go about doing that."

Quentin just nodded, mostly to himself. They'd had this conversation already, and he had felt just the same. "Okay. But that doesn't mean easy."

"I do not relish being the sole optimist in this relationship, Quentin. It's ruining my image."

Quentin looked up at Eliot again, smiling. He remembered the Eliot Waugh of years past, with his perfectly styled curls, carefully shaved face, pressed vests and exacting sensibilities. So much had changed, and then so much really hadn't. "As far as the optimism thing goes, I'll have you remember that I was carrying that torch for the both of us up until just now. Maybe we'll just have to trade off."

Eliot waggled his head side to side in mock-contemplation. "Deal." Then he put a hand on Quentin's arm to stop him from continuing down the path. "We're fucking great magicians, Q. And if this quest is motivated by our determination and devotion, I'd say we've got this thing in the bag."

* * *

The night before they were set to drop Teddy off at the Ashmore farm and officially begin their quest, nobody felt like sleeping. Even Teddy, who only knew that his dads were going on a trip and he was staying with Grandma and Grandpa, could clearly sense tension in the air, and when he pouted and whined to be allowed to stay up, Quentin had caved almost at once.

The three of them had stayed up late, cuddled together on the daybed outside. Eliot told stories about Auntie Margo, some of which even Quentin hadn't heard before. He had fun trying to read past the child-friendly edits to discover the true depravity of Margo's antics. He could almost pretend this was a normal evening, like Arielle was just inside, or visiting her parents and would be back the following morning. Even the melancholy facts of reality weren't enough to bring him down.

And then the next morning, they were off. The Ashmore farmhouse offered them a melancholy reception, even if everyone tried to put on a happy face for Teddy's sake.

Mr. Ashmore, to Quentin's surprise, offered him and Eliot both a big hug when they walked in. "Boys," he said. "I don't know how to thank you for what you're about to do."

Quentin shot a glance over at Teddy, who had already run across the room to say hello to some of his cousins, aunts, and uncles. He kept his voice quiet as he responded. "You don't have to thank us. We'd do anything for Arielle."

He nodded, stiff and controlled. Eliot stepped forward and clapped him on the arm. "Your daughter is strong. One of the strongest people I know. And as for me and Q, we're not too shabby either. We'll get her back."

"And you'll let me have a piece of Taseer Pickwick once she's out of his clutches," Mr. Ashmore said, his tremulous gaze suddenly hardened and fierce. It was disconcerting to see such a genial man in the grip of such obvious fury. And it was equally difficult because that ire was directed towards Taseer. Even now, Quentin wasn't sure whether he  _ was _ to blame for Arielle's condition, or whether he was victim alongside her.

"Trust us, we won't let what's happened to Arielle stand," Eliot said, dodging the specific request for vengeance.

That night, sleeping in Arielle's childhood bedroom, Quentin longed for the comforts of home. He supposed it wasn't a good sign that he was already homesick and they hadn't properly set off on their quest yet, but after a few minutes of stirring quietly next to Eliot, who was also clearly awake, he realized something, and let out a huff of air, audible enough for Eliot to hear.

"Mmm?" he asked, wordless, rolling slightly so he was pressed up against Quentin.

"I'm homesick," Quentin said.

"Not a good sign, we've barely left," Eliot said, echoing Quentin's thoughts of just moments ago.

"No, I mean, I'm homesick for here, for our home  _ here _ . Not for like... you know."

"Earth," Eliot said. His mouth was squished up right against Quentin's shoulder, and he kissed it absentmindedly, rolling further into Quentin so he could wrap him in his arms. "Just now, you said homesick, and I didn't even think about..."

"Home-home," Quentin said. "Because it's not, anymore." It was one of the saddest feelings he'd ever had in his life, but there was also a great deal of pride mixed in with the melancholy. He'd loved so much about his old life. There was so much he missed. But he'd built something here, with Eliot. He'd fought for it. And as much as their future seemed bleak and uncertain at the moment, he was going to keep fighting for it, with everything he had. "This is home now, to me. You are."

Eliot was silent for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice had gone low and hoarse with feeling. "Quentin. That was - just - so incredibly fucking cheesy."

Quentin snorted in response, and elbowed Eliot lightly in the chest. "Dick." Eliot squeezed him tight, nuzzling his nose into the back of Quentin's neck.

"I'm worried," he confessed into the dark stillness of the small room.

"I'm not," Quentin answered. He tugged one of the arms that Eliot had wrapped around him and brought a hand up to his mouth, pressing kisses along Eliot's palm. "Well, I am. I'm always worried about something. But we've got this."

"Your turn with the optimism torch?" Eliot said, breathing deep into the space behind Quentin's ear.

"For tonight, anyway," Quentin said.

They fell asleep, Eliot's arms tight enough around Quentin that it was almost hard to breathe. Some time in the night, Teddy crept into the room, and still half-asleep, they separated only far enough to create a space for him, cradled between them in slumber.

* * *

**ELIOT**

It had taken everything in him not to cry when he said goodbye to Teddy the following morning. Their son had actually taken it remarkably well. Of course, he was six years old, and didn't understand the full implications of what was going on. He was used to staying with his grandparents, used to his parents darting in and out for a while, and always coming back. And that was why they had to do this in the first place - they would come back, and they'd bring Teddy's mother with them, no matter what.

With some last parting hugs and a promise that they'd be back as soon as possible, Eliot and Quentin hit the road, packs filled with camping gear and food and magical jars. Their first stop was the river, for the water component of the spell. Chatwin's Torrent, as it would one day be called. They had four days of journeying ahead of them, almost all of it through dense woods too narrow and overrun for horses.

"You okay?" Eliot asked, after only an hour of walking. They were trekking through farmland to start, but the large expanse of the Violet Woodlands were looming ever larger as they continued.

"I think so," Quentin said, and he sounded it. There was an invigorated energy to Quentin, and Eliot knew he was riding high on the energy of action. He wasn't sure if he could capture that same energy, for all that he'd been feeling confident about their chances only days ago.

He found that Quentin had been right - they did indeed trade off on carrying the optimism torch. As they set out on their journey, Quentin was feeling hopeful, and Eliot anxious. By the time they'd selected a spot to camp for the night, Quentin was caught in a thought spiral about Teddy alone in the big farmhouse, missing the closeness imposed by the smallness of the cottage, while Eliot was cheerfully contemplating the map and declaring that if they kept this pace, they'd get to their first destination a day ahead of schedule.

"We can't rush ahead," Quentin said, staring at one of the pages in Bella's notebook. It was a list of all the traps waiting for them along the way to each of the ingredients. Most of them were no problem for a couple of magicians like themselves, but a few were more worrisome. "We have to pass through a grove of malevolent trees, apparently."

"That's after the river, I thought," Eliot said, coming over to look over Quentin's shoulder at the notebook.

"Oh, right. Okay but apparently there's a colony of poisonous butterflies - "

"That we can go around, Q," Eliot said, impatient. "We've already mapped everything out. Come sit down."

"No, we need to set up camp - " Quentin said, stubborn, and then looked up. "Oh. Sorry." Eliot was sitting outside of the small tent he'd already erected, next to a circle of stones he'd collected using magic to serve as a barrier for their campfire.

"You'll get the next one," Eliot said, laughing at him as Quentin wandered over and plopped down next to Eliot.

"Shit, I was so calm last night," Quentin said, clearly annoyed with himself.

"And I was decidedly not," Eliot said, tilting over to nudge Quentin. "It's a good thing we're doing this together, huh?"

"Now who's being cheesy?" Quentin smirked, but then his face relaxed into a genuine smile, and he scooted closer to give Eliot a sweet, simple kiss. Then, he twisted his hands up and out and flames appeared in the center of their small clearing, still on the outskirts of the sprawling Violet Woodlands. It wasn't too cold out at this time of year, but there was a bite to the wind that made the fire a necessity at night.

"Which of the ingredients are you the most worried about?" Eliot asked. "Because the way I see it, we've got the water part down. It's only going to get worse from here."

"You're excellent at making me feel better," Quentin snarked, moving closer to Eliot and the fire. "But yeah, water should be easy. At least we have a frame of reference for Chatwin's Torrent. I think I'm most worried about the birds."

"Really? Why?"

"Well, Arnold's our friend, and he didn't hand over a feather. Imagine having a giant bird for an adversary. I'm just worried the owl's going to try and eat us or something."

"See, and there I was freaking out over the whole 'blood witch' thing," Eliot mused. "Seriously, what does that even mean?"

Eliot looked over at Quentin in time to see a flash of unease cross his face. "Yeah, I was trying to push that one out of my mind."

"How's that working for you?"

"El," Quentin said, his voice suddenly grave. "Right now, I want to think about anything other than the shit-storm we've gotten ourselves into."

The hardness in his voice gave Eliot pause. He looked at Quentin, really looked at him, in the glow of the fire. He saw Quentin, as beautiful as he'd ever been, but with lines of worry around his eyes and mouth. His hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. His hands were fidgeting in front of him as he stared straight ahead, apparently mesmerized by the fire. Eliot thought of a dozen different things he could say. Jokes to cajole him out of a bad mood. Gentle encouragement to get him to talk about how he was feeling. And then he discarded them all.

"Okay," he said. He tugged one of Quentin's hands away from his other one, gripping it tight. "Okay, distraction time." And he pulled Quentin forward. It was essentially auto-pilot for Quentin to climb onto his lap, and he did, huffing out a breath of laughter but settling easy enough into the cradle of Eliot's body.

"I love how you think that always works," Quentin said.

"Doesn't it?" Eliot ducked down to press feather-light kisses against Quentin's neck.

"I'm exhausted," Quentin said, half-apologetic. He squeezed tighter to Eliot, kissing along his forehead, and Eliot smiled into his skin.

"Me too. But I'll have you know my cuddle-therapy is nearly as effective as my sex-therapy."

"You talk a big game, Waugh," Quentin said, and then yelped in protest when Eliot made to stand up, dumping Quentin off of his lap as he did so.

"Come to bed with me, Q," Eliot said, holding a hand down for him.

They fell asleep curled in to each other, warm in a bedroll with an extra blanket thrown on top for good measure. With Quentin in his arms, Eliot could almost pretend he wasn't sleeping in a tent.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

It was strange how easy it was to get into new routines. That hadn't been Quentin's experience earlier in life - every time something came along and messed up his carefully ordered world, he'd found it nearly impossible to cope with the change. But things were different now - he was a father, and he had a partner, and even if everything else around him changed, those facts remained constant. He and Eliot had gotten used to being in Fillory, to working on the mosaic day in and day out. They had welcomed Arielle into their life and then Teddy, and through all of it, they were constants for one another. Now, as Quentin took on the job of breaking camp each morning and making breakfast while Eliot charted their day's path, and as Eliot set up camp each night, he marveled at how simple it was to share every part of a life with someone, even at the worst of times. He had never really thought he'd get to have this, and the fact that he was getting it with Eliot of all people was sometimes still enough to stun him.

It wasn't what you could call fun, exactly, to go trudging through the woods on foot, wishing they had the circumstances for a transportation spell, missing Teddy, anxious for Arielle. But there was something undeniably lovely about going through it all with Eliot by his side. More often than not, they walked through the overgrown paths in the increasingly wild woods hand in hand, Quentin with his face buried in the map, Eliot helping him avoid tree roots and low-hanging branches.

On the fourth morning, the air started to smell crisper, the foliage somehow brighter and more lively than the rest of the woods.

"It's close by," Quentin said, a few hours after they had set out, squinting at the map in Bella's notebook. Despite its unprofessional artistry, it really was fairly accurate in scale. He felt Eliot's hand on the small of his back as he leaned over his shoulder to study it for a moment.

"Okay. Should we come up with a game plan?"

"A bit hard to do when we have no idea what we're facing." He kept walking, glancing down at the map again and then stopping, his head cocked to the side. "I hear it."

"Less than a mile away," Eliot said. "I can hear it too."

Chatwin's Torrent, which wasn't called that yet because they were in the past, was a fairly large river that wound through miles and miles of the Fillorian wilderness. Once they arrived at the river, in fact, it was a fairly straightforward journey along the river towards Whitespire. Unfortunately for them, the search for the other ingredients would deviate from that straight path in a couple of places. "There's a Watcher," Quentin said. "He's a bit of a stickler, kind of a dick. That's about all I know."

"But he's not in the books, right?"

"He makes a cameo," Quentin said. "But this is actually just what Penny told me. He met the guy, and he fucked with his hands, remember?"

"But that's like - some number of years in the future," Eliot said, tripping over the sentence. They were fairly certain they were around a century in the past, from their own perspective of Fillory, but it had been hard to nail down with any accuracy.

"Yeah, but I don't think the Watcher is an inherited title, somehow. It's probably the same guy."

"So he's a dick and he's also functionally immortal."

"Yep."

"I repeat, what's the game plan?" Eliot said, and Quentin looked up at him, frowning at the anxious line between his brows.

"Approach river, get water?"

"Quentin."

"Eliot. I don't know, okay? I'm sure it will be fine."

"Liar," Eliot said, and while he still looked worried, he did break and offer Quentin a half smile. "Just don't be reckless."

"Yes, mother."

Eliot scoffed at him but didn't bother with an actual response. Quentin took his hand as a gesture of support. He felt invigorated by action - they'd already made the jars, they had a map, they had a plan, and he was feeling better than he had in weeks, maybe months, with a clear goal in front of him. But even as the current wielder of the optimism torch, he had his doubts. Eliot's fear made sense to him. They had to succeed in this. Not just for Arielle, but for themselves. For Teddy. If they fucked it up, or got themselves into serious trouble, they'd be abandoning so much, risking everything that really mattered.

The rushing of the water was loud now, and Quentin was just about to ask Eliot if he thought they should call out for the Watcher, when the man himself appeared in front of them, melting out of the greenery without a sound.

"Welcome, fair travelers," the Watcher said, giving them a bow. The gesture dripped of irony, although Quentin couldn't find exact proof of disrespect. He was dressed informally, in drab colors, but every item of his clothing was oddly pristine, giving no sign that he dwelt in the forest instead of in the most sterile of environments. "Have you come to bathe in the healing river, to partake of its cleansing properties?"

Quentin shot a nervous glance at Eliot, who gave him an encouraging nod.

"We don't need to be healed," Quentin said. "We just need a jar of water." He held one of the jars out in explanation, feeling awkward and off-kilter.

The Watcher frowned at the two of them, darting closer to study the jar. Quentin felt Eliot stiffen next to him, shifting just a touch closer. The Watcher was the kind of figure who dealt in tricks and traps, and that they were prepared for. But they'd been warned by Arnold, by Ostrich, and by Rita Ashmore, that this quest would challenge and test their mental and physical fortitude. They couldn't let their guard down, not for a moment.

"You have an enchanted container," the Watcher said, holding a hand out as if to take the jar from Quentin.

"You can see it from where you are," Eliot said. "No need to come any closer." Quentin stepped on his foot surreptitiously. Snapping at this guy wasn't likely to help their cause.

"Tut, tut. Such rudeness, and from ones clearly so in need of my help," the Watcher said. But he had stopped where he stood, staring at the jar from a distance. "I know this craftsmanship. You are looking to free a trapped soul."

Eliot sucked in a sharp breath next to him. Quentin could feel the lines of tension roiling through his body, and leaned against him, trying to offer silent support. The truth was, Quentin wasn't actually shocked by the Watcher's keen insight into what they were doing there. He was a quest marker, the kind of character in the Fillory novels who was there for the Chatwins to encounter on their various missions. An NPC, if he'd ever seen one. And Quentin knew that his life wasn't really a storybook, that this Watcher, whoever he was, existed outside of this very specific context. And yet, they were all playing their parts. The Watcher knew what they were after, because he needed to have the upper hand. They'd been warned about sacrifices and challenges along the way, but that's what a quest  _ was _ , right?

Quentin took a step forward, away from the warmth of Eliot, and presented the jar to the Watcher. "What do you need from us in exchange for a jar of water from the river?" he asked. "Tell us your price."

The Watcher smiled. "You cannot know the true price you pay until the time comes to pay it."

"Riddles," Eliot muttered from just behind Quentin. Among the dozens of disparate thoughts flying through Quentin's head currently, he found room to be grateful to Eliot for letting him take the lead. He'd half expected his partner to dart forward and pull him back when he'd taken a step towards the Watcher.

"It's not a riddle," the Watcher said to Eliot irritably. He took the jar from Quentin, examining it from all sides. "I'm above that kind of claptrap. No, the price is simple, and, unfortunately, it's preordained by the quest. If it were just up to me, I'd happily accept gold and let you go on your merry way, but alas..."

"So then what?" Quentin asked. "You say we can't know the true price, and then you say the price is set?"

"You must bathe in the river," the Watcher said, handing the jar back to Quentin. "That is the price."

At that, Quentin looked back at Eliot, finding his own confusion mirrored in Eliot's expression. "I'm sorry?"

"You must bathe in the river," the Watcher repeated, nodding his head at Quentin. "Or, really, either one of you."

"But if we'd come here in order to bathe in the river, we would have had to pay for that," Eliot said, finally taking a step up and putting himself on a level with Quentin again. "But instead, in order to take a jar away with us, we pay by..."

"Bathing in the river, yes," the Watcher said, rolling his eyes. "And not we. Only one of you. That's important."

"Why?" Quentin and Eliot said together. Quentin was trying to decide if he was more annoyed or anxious. They'd barely started in their quest and already they were coming up against annoyingly esoteric instructions. He'd probably let himself grow too complacent when Arielle's Aunt Rita had possessed a book with all of the ingredients and spell-work laid out so neat and clear. Of course this wasn't going to be as easy as all that.

"You cannot know the true price - " the Watcher started to repeat, and Eliot let out a groan of frustration, cutting him off.

"Okay, so one of us has to bathe in the river, and then we get a jar of water?" Quentin repeated. He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the Watcher just nodded, rolling his eyes dramatically as he did so.

"I'll do it," Eliot said immediately.

"Because you think it's a trap?" Quentin said. "And you want to fall on the grenade?"

"No," Eliot said.

"Okay, great. If you're not worried, then I'll do it," Quentin said. He made to turn towards the river, and, as he had predicted, Eliot tugged on his arm to pull him back around.

"Let's talk about it first," Eliot said, anxiety in every word.

"El..."

"If the two of you are going to argue over who's going for a swim, could you kindly do it out of my earshot?" the Watcher said. He was examining his fingernails in a nonchalant sort of way, affecting total boredom. But Quentin, again primed for the intricacies of these sorts of quests, could see a cunning interest in his eyes. It mattered, then. It mattered that one of them was going to swim in this river and the other one wasn't. Maybe there would be a trap or a test for the person who went in, or maybe the test would be for the one left on the shore. There was no real way of telling.

Preparing for this quest had had its own set of challenges - the careful planning of their route, the work they'd done to confirm what had really happened to Arielle, not to mention the magic imbuing each of the vessels, the long and arduous process of getting each one ready to contain the magical essences of the ingredients they needed... but even with all of that, this was their first real test.

The two of them walked a short way away from the Torrent's shore, leaving the Watcher to idyll away down among the greenery.

"Okay, so here's my pitch," Eliot said. "You should let me do it."

"That's not a pitch," Quentin said, smiling at him in exasperation. "That's just you being overprotective. I seem to recall we had a chat about this before we set out."

"Well," Eliot said. "I'm a hypocrite, sue me."

"It's a river, El."

"So let me - "

"I've thought this out," Quentin said, interrupting him. "Obviously quests like this aren't black and white. There are always like - lessons you have to learn, and sacrifices you have to make. That kind of thing. Right?"

"In stories."

"Fillory operates on stories, though. Legends and stuff like that  _ mean  _ something here, in a way that’s different from on Earth. We've experienced enough of that in our lifetime to believe that much."

"Okay, fair enough. What does that mean for us here and now?" The look Eliot was giving him was open enough, receptive to Quentin's words. Quentin took that as a good sign and went on.

"It means that we need to be strategic. Everything we've heard about this quest so far makes it clear that it can't be a one person job. The very fact that this is a choice, that one of us must choose to go into the river, and the other must choose to stay out of it, speaks to that. It's a test. And the next ingredient will involve a test too, I'm sure. And the one after that. And I think..." Quentin paused, biting his lip. He wasn't quite sure how to phrase what he wanted to say. Eliot leaned into him and wrapped his arms around him, a silent encouragement.

"I think," Quentin repeated. "That if anyone needs magical river healing between the two of us, it's me."

Eliot went stone-still against him. "You think - what, the river's going to cure your depression?" There was a wobble in his voice that Quentin, heartbreakingly, could easily identify as hope.

"No," he said, as gently as he could manage. "I don't think it works like that."

"Then - "

"But it might... bring things up? I don't know. Magic healing rivers, wishes from genies, those things always have a 'careful what you wish for' sort of vibe to them. Maybe the river will help me heal, but maybe it'll do that by forcing me to confront my inner demons or something."

"Okay, if this is supposed to encourage me to let you - " Eliot started, but Quentin poked him hard in the side to interrupt the sentence.

"There's no  _ letting _ me. This is a joint decision. I'm just trying to talk it through."

"Quentin," Eliot said. "If you think the river's going to make you confront your demons, then - shouldn't I? I mean, I don't have clinical depression, it might be easier for me, and that's - I'm not saying I don't believe you could do it, it's just... you know... because..."

Quentin could tell that Eliot was worried about offending him, and he turned his face against Eliot's chest, placing a kiss right over his heart through his shirt. "El, honey," he said, letting a tiny bubble of amusement creep into his tone. "Are you under the misapprehension that you're not as fucked up as I am?"

Eliot let out a startled laugh, and squeezed Quentin tighter to him. "You make a good point."

"Bottom line," Quentin said, taking a step away from Eliot and looking up at him, firm and sure. "One of us has to do this one. Undoubtedly the next thing will be something a lot more terrible than going for a quick swim."

"So I can take the hypothetically terrible thing, then?" Eliot said. "Is this all some master ploy to give yourself the easier job?"

"That does sound like me," Quentin joked. "But seriously - we can keep talking about this if you - "

"No," Eliot said. He was frowning, contemplative and serious. "I trust you. I can't say I won't always worry about you because that's like - a core personality trait at this point. But we agreed we were partners in this quest and we both knew there would be risks."

The relief that Quentin felt was maybe disproportionate to Eliot's words. But he realized in that moment that he'd been anxious about this very thing. He knew Eliot would die for him, just as Eliot knew the same was true in reverse. It came down to stubbornness - the quest would never work if Eliot was trying to protect Quentin from every perceived danger along the way. They had to stay focused, and trust in each other's strengths and abilities. Arielle was the goal. Reuniting their family was more important than arguing over which of them got to protect the other from harm.

And then, as it turned out, the whole thing was incredibly anticlimactic. The Watcher had merely raised a bored eyebrow at Quentin when he'd announced their decision, and nodded his head towards the river. Quentin had picked his way to the bank, undressed, and, with a final glance at a very worried Eliot, waded in to the water, the magical jar clutched in his hand.

And... he swam. He floated in the water and nothing happened. He didn't feel any incredible healing properties, he didn't feel a new awakened sense of security. After thirty seconds, shivering in the cold, he uncapped the jar and scooped up some of the river water, sealing it with the lid and then tracing his fingers through the tuts to activate the jar's magical properties. A faint blue glow surrounded the jar.

"Well?" Eliot called to him from the riverbank.

"I guess... that's it?" Quentin called back. He waded out of the river, handing the jar over to Eliot. The second he was truly out of the water and back on solid ground, Eliot let out a sigh of relief.

"Nothing happened," he said, his eyes slipping closed. "Shit, Q. Nothing happened."

"Yeah," Quentin echoed, shivering as he hurried to get dressed. "That's weird."

"Can we not question it for half a second?" Eliot said, stepping up to Quentin the moment he was dressed and wrapping his arms back around him. "Jesus, you're freezing."

"Maybe the first challenge is hypothermia," Quentin suggested, burrowing his freezing face into Eliot's warm neck. Eliot didn't move away, even though the cold against his skin couldn't be comfortable.

"Let's get out of here, before the powers that be decide to change our minds and make us fight a Kraken or something."

"A Kraken? In a river? I feel like a sea serpent is more likely for a smaller body of water like this, although even that's not exactly - "

"Quentin."

"Right, sorry," Quentin said, laughing through his clattering teeth. They passed by the Watcher, and Quentin half expected him to stop them and tell them off for stealing the water without paying a price. But he just waved sardonically at them, and within a few minutes the riverbank was out of view.

And that, more or less, was that. They'd succeeded in getting their first ingredient. But while Eliot was eagerly guiding him further away from the river, his arms tight around his shivering shoulders, Quentin found himself lethargic and hesitant. Could that really be it? There had to be more. There had to be something. He hadn't even felt anything...

But looking up into Eliot's face, he saw true relief. He knew how difficult it had been for Eliot to let him do that, and he really didn't want to rain on his parade. At least, not yet. He clutched the jar in his hands, staring at the crystal clear water inside. It shimmered against the blue glow suffusing the glass.

It was perfect. Quentin wished he could have believed in it.


	12. Chapter Twelve - In Which Quentin and Eliot Meet the Trees

**QUENTIN**

"Let's get you dry," Eliot said, as they reached a small clearing. They were still close enough to the river to hear its burbling. For the next stage of their quest, they'd stay near it, and continue coming back to it along their journey, following it in a circuitous manner almost all the way to Whitespire.

"It's midday, we don't really need to set up camp yet - "

"Q," Eliot said. "Q, we did it. We got the first ingredient and nothing fucking awful happened. Let's give ourselves a reprieve."

Quentin felt the instinct to argue. Time was of the essence, after all. They had no idea what Arielle's captor might be forcing her to do. And on the other side of that, while they had succeeded in getting the first spell ingredient, it still didn't feel right. There hadn't been a test, or a challenge, or a sacrifice - or at least not one that Quentin had noticed at the time.

But as he opened his mouth to say all of this to Eliot, to share his unease in the face of what should have been a victory, he stopped. Eliot was already kneeling, enlarging his small pack with a few quick twists of his hands. He was tugging things out, ready to set up for the evening. And as Quentin watched him, he saw the lines of exhaustion on his face, the way even this first uneventful challenge had scared him.

And so they stopped. They stopped and built a fire and Eliot made Quentin take his clothes off so the dampness that had seeped through from his skin would be gone before nightfall. Eliot made them stew and then cuddled up next to Quentin, their backs up against a tree trunk. They traced out a set of standard protective tuts together, enclosing themselves in a bubble of magic that would warn them if anyone came too near. Inside their campsite, Quentin tried to let himself relax and enjoy their victory.

"One down," Eliot said.

"Yeah."

"Please stop," Eliot groaned, tilting his head back so it thumped against the tree.

"I didn't say anything!"

"You're thinking it,  _ so  _ loud. Nothing terrible happened, so clearly something went wrong."

"Hey, you said it," Quentin said, shrugging against him.

"The quest only works for those who are true of heart, right?" Eliot said. "Isn't that what everyone keeps telling us?"

"Yes, and?"

"And so maybe it worked, and we got the first ingredient, because we're both true of heart, fleet of foot, heroes of old. All that jazz."

"Fleet of foot?"

"The alliteration was appealing," Eliot said. But then he sighed, and scrunched himself down so he could rest his head against Quentin's shoulder. "I'm just saying there's no point in worrying. So far, so good."

"When has anything ever been 'so far, so good'?" Quentin said, but he felt Eliot go tense against him, and he sighed, trying to work past his stupid anxious mood. If Eliot wanted to live in denial and pretend the rest of the quest was going to be this easy, then Quentin didn't actually want to pop that bubble. "I'm sorry. I think - " he coughed. "It's stupid, but I guess I thought maybe the river  _ would  _ fix me. Or that I'd feel something, in any case."

"Q, you don't need to be fixed."

"Please, like you wouldn't have been thrilled if it had worked."

"Quentin Coldwater," Eliot said, stern. "I fucking love you, okay? Exactly the way you are. Don't insult me by making me shower you with platitudes. You know how I feel."

"You're such a bleeding heart, El," Quentin said, bringing a hand down to tangle with Eliot's where it was resting against his own leg. "It's just... after everything that's happened to me in my life, I get suspicious when things are going well."

"Preaching to the choir," Eliot said. "But you have to adjust your perspective, Q."

"In what way?"

"The night we - our first anniversary here in Fillory," Eliot said. He sat up, disentangling them slightly so that he could look at Quentin while he talked. "You kissed me, and I - "

"What?"

"I could have ruined it right then and there. Or I could have fucked you, because God knows I wasn’t strong enough to turn that down, and  _ then  _ ruined it afterwards. Honestly, I think that's what I expected myself to do."

Quentin stayed silent, waiting for Eliot to start making sense. It was always best to let him talk out how he was feeling, arrive at the answer organically. It was something they had in common when it came to communicating, and they'd both gotten pretty good at being quiet when the other had something to say.

"I don't get to keep good things in my life," Eliot said. "Or - I didn't think I did. And then there we were, and you had kissed me, and even while it was all happening, even right afterwards, I'm lying there and you're curled up next to me and I feel like my heart's about to explode, there was this like - crossroads moment."

Eliot was silent then for long enough that Quentin almost  _ did  _ say something. He squeezed Eliot's hand tighter in his, and Eliot went on. "I could have played it off. It could have been that we were both sexually frustrated, and we were good friends, and hey, what's a couple of blow jobs between pals, right? In that moment, I was already well aware of how much I loved you. But the leap of faith required to believe that you could - that you could actually want me like that too... just, historically, it didn't make sense that something that good would be happening to me."

"El," Quentin said, unable to help himself. "It kills me that - "

"No," Eliot said. "Just - let me finish, okay?"

Quentin nodded, leaning more fully against Eliot. He chanced a look at his face and saw that he was facing their campfire, the flames dancing in his eyes. "So I was there, thinking - I can't really have this. Maybe I can have the sex, and maybe I can keep his friendship. But he doesn't really have any choice, right? I mean, we're stuck here together. It's not anything more than that. I think it was hard to let myself believe in something truly real because if I was wrong, it - wouldn't have been survivable. But then - I don't know. You looked at me and you asked me to come inside with you, and something in my brain just clicked. And I thought -  _ fuck it _ . Say it all goes wrong in the morning. At least I'll have this. I had the chance to show you how I felt, and I wasn't about to half-ass it. Whether I could really believe you'd want me or not, you deserved my honesty. My dedication."

"It's bizarre," Quentin said. "How fucking similar we really are when it comes to stuff like this." He hadn't meant to interrupt again, but it seemed important for Eliot to know. "Everything you just said - you knew you loved me, but you couldn't really believe it would be reciprocated... that's essentially how I felt."

"I've never been more grateful to have taken a leap of faith," Eliot said. "I'm trying to picture what our lives would have looked like if I hadn't just gone for it..."

"I'm the one who kissed you," Quentin reminded him. "I think I'm the one who went for it."

"And I'm so grateful for that, too," Eliot said. "God knows how long it would have taken me to work up the courage."

"You're making me want to climb into your lap and kiss you stupid," Quentin said, his heart tight in his chest. "But I have no idea what this has to do with our current quest."

Eliot laughed, a freeing sound in the mostly quiet night under the trees. "Right. Okay, my point was, I decided that I wanted to be happy, and that it was okay to want that. And it's worked out far better than I could have dreamed."

"So?"

"So, let's try and apply at least a fraction of that optimism to our current situation, yeah? Sure, it's totally possible that we wake up in the morning and discover that swimming in the river has given you some terrible skin disease or something. Or maybe we get to the end of this thing and the water doesn't work because we didn't have to suffer enough to get it. But what the fuck is the point in thinking that way? It's not going to change anything. Let's operate under the assumption that we're successful, and just go from there."

"I do not fucking understand where this whole optimistic Eliot thing came from," Quentin said, incredulous but also fond. He really was about ten seconds from crawling into Eliot's lap, despite their surroundings.

"Weren't you paying attention?" Eliot said, bringing their joined hands up and kissing the back of Quentin's. "It comes from you."

* * *

**ELIOT**

The little jar, filled with oddly clear river water and emitting a faint blue glow of magic, was in Quentin's hands when Eliot woke up the next morning. He was staring at it, a mesmerized yet still contemplative look on his face. They’d slept out in the open the night before, not bothering with the tent, and Quentin had somehow managed to pack up most of their stuff without waking Eliot up.

"Why do you think Arnold wouldn't give us a feather?" he asked, when he noticed that Eliot was awake.

"Oh my God, Q, not this again."

"Because we hadn't earned it yet," Quentin answered his own question. He was spiraling back into the same doubts he’d had the night before, and Eliot found he was at the end of his rope. He wiggled out of his bedroll and approached Quentin on hands and knees, gingerly plucking the jar from his hands and setting it down a few feet away.

"Come here," he commanded, and then leaned forward and kissed Quentin before he had a chance to obey. He wasn't above using sex as a diversionary tactic on occasion, even if Quentin absolutely knew that's what he was doing.

"I'm not having sex with you in the middle of the woods," Quentin said, right up against Eliot's mouth. His hands were buried in Eliot's hair, tugging and grasping as he wiggled himself closer.

"You're not?" Eliot said, biting Quentin's lower lip and smirking as Quentin let out a little squeak.

"We've got a  _ quest _ ."

"If you think I'm waiting until this quest is over to fuck you, you're out of your mind."

Quentin laughed, then groaned when Eliot manhandled him, pulling him forward into his lap. "El."

"Okay, I promise not to distract you, if you promise to stay out of your head. For like - half a day. Then you can go back to obsessing."

Quentin had lowered his head to Eliot's neck and was placing light kisses there, his body on autopilot as he pretended to consider this offer. "Okay, counter-proposal. You fuck me right now, but make it quick, and then I shut up about the stupid river water for the rest of the day."

"You're the worst negotiator I've ever met," Eliot said, gleeful. Quentin's legs were around his waist and he tilted him forward so he fell back against the compact dirt. He kissed him, slow and wet and deep, and it was only in that moment that he fully realized how much he'd missed him. They'd been together every second of every day for the past few weeks, even more so than usual, but they'd both been hyper-focused on their mission. They hadn't had sex since the night before they'd dropped Teddy off on the farm.

Consequently, it wasn't going to take long for either of them. In fact, Eliot had barely sunk into Quentin's body after the minimum of foreplay, when he felt Quentin shudder and start to shake, close to the edge. "God, you're so tense," Eliot said, ducking down to bite and suck at Quentin's neck.

"You, on the other hand, are just the picture of relaxation," Quentin retorted, but his voice was so breathy and needy that the quip didn't land particularly hard.

Eliot set a steady, fast pace, aware in a tangential sort of way that they were in the middle of a forest which did in fact include fully sentient talking animals, and maybe even the occasional human traveler. And Quentin had a point, they  _ were  _ on a bit of a schedule -

"El," Quentin groaned, bowing up into him, his eyes fluttering and his legs tight around Eliot's waist. "Jesus, and you say I'm the one stuck in my head."

"Sorry," Eliot said, ducking down to kiss Quentin, letting his cares fade to the back of his mind as he focused on how good and right and perfect it was to sink into Quentin's lovely body, the sound of their skin sliding against each other, the warmth of Quentin's unsteady breath against his shoulder, the bite of Quentin's fingers in his back. His orgasm took him by surprise, the gentle roll of sensation sharpening before he'd really noticed it - "Oh shit. Oh  _ God _ , Q - "

"You feel so good," Quentin said, fingers digging even harder into Eliot's back. "Come on, come for me - El - "

Eliot's hips snapped forward a few more times, artless and without rhythm, and then he went still, every line in his body going taut and then relaxing all at once, a boneless feeling of true peace overtaking every inch of him. Quentin was still hard when Eliot had come down from the waves of pleasure, looking up at him with wide, greedy eyes, his mouth pink and wet and - " _ Fuck _ , Eliot."

Eliot blinked, trying to re-order the universe in his mind, and then shook his head, sliding out of Quentin and feeling his heart topple over at the small bereft sound Quentin made at the disconnection. He slid down Quentin's body and took him in his mouth, with no preamble, and tasted the saltiness of precum and the beating of Quentin's heartbeat in his cock, so close to tipping over the edge.

"Oh God," Quentin said, hands automatically fisting in Eliot's hair. "I'm gonna - "

Eliot hummed around him and that was it - Quentin was gone, jerking up into Eliot's mouth, groaning and shaking apart. Eliot kept his mouth around him, swallowed every drop, and pulled off with a quick kiss to the tip of Quentin's cock, before resting his head against his heaving stomach.

"I fucking needed that," Quentin said after a few moments of sated silence.

"Evidently," Eliot said.

"We should move."

"Can't," Eliot said. "Can't feel my legs."

"Okay."

Eliot's brain was on a delayed reaction, but after a few moments he chuckled at Quentin's easy acquiescence. With the greatest reluctance, he turned his head to nuzzle into Quentin's stomach for a moment, and then sat up with with a loud groan. "We should move," he repeated Quentin's words, and Quentin just blinked at him before nodding and sitting up, pressing his forehead into Eliot's shoulder for a moment. It was a thank you, and a promise, and everything all at once.

By their less-than-perfect calculations, it would be another three day hike before they would arrive at the part of the forest containing the dryad's sacred tree, their next ingredient. As they set off through the winding woods, Quentin  _ did _ seem more relaxed, rolling his eyes indulgently when Eliot teased him for being so easily fucked into a good mood.

And yet, it wasn't as if Quentin didn't have a point. Getting that river water hadn't just been suspiciously easy - it has been  _ nothing _ . There had been no challenge to overcome, no sacrifice to make. And they were in a story, of sorts. They'd cast themselves as the protagonists, Arielle as their damsel. The quest was their hero's journey, and shit always broke bad in those kinds of tales. Or so Quentin told him.

"Unbelievable," Quentin said suddenly, and Eliot turned to look at him as they kept pace along the uneven footpath. Quentin was looking up at him with a raised eyebrow and a slight frown. "Now  _ you're  _ getting all anxious."

"I am not."

"Please. Do you need me to return the favor? Because I'm sure I could be persuaded - "

Eliot laughed at him, and purposefully shoved some of the tension down deep inside of him, to be examined at a later date. "We can save that for tonight, darling Q. I just- I want us to be focused. I don't want us to be caught unawares. And - "

At that exact moment, a loud rustling sound came from above them, and a large figure came down through the treetops. Before Eliot's instincts could kick in he felt Quentin slam into him, pushing him out of the path of whatever was attacking them. He landed hard on the ground with Quentin on top of him. Quentin scrambled up and away and threw his arms up, already moving them in a defensive formation, and Eliot joined him, trying to position himself to block Quentin's body with his own if necessary -

"Hello, Children of Earth," a voice said, very calmly.

"Arnold," Quentin gasped, his arms dropping to his sides. Eliot, a heartbeat behind Quentin's realization, was still fighting to position himself between Quentin and the threat, but then the word cut through his panicked brain and he froze, looking up into the eyes of the giant eagle, who had just crashed through the treetops and landed somewhat awkwardly on the forest floor. He looked as regal as Eliot had ever seen him, but there really wasn't a lot of room for his giant wingspan down there among the dense greenery.

"What the hell," Eliot croaked, his hand finding Quentin's arm and gripping it tight. "You can't just go around dropping down on people like that."

"My apologies if I've alarmed you," Arnold said, as if he'd just knocked on their door unexpectedly instead of careening down from the heavens like the predator that he was.

"Um," Quentin said, his voice wavering. He scooted back until he was right next to Eliot, and Eliot slid his hand down Quentin's arm to tangle their fingers together. "That's alright. Can we - um. Help you with anything?"

Eliot chuffed out a laugh at Quentin's oddly formal address, and thought he saw a glint of shared amusement in Arnold's eyes as well. But he wasn't really in the mood for camaraderie with the giant terrifying bird who a) had just scared him half to death, and b) hadn't given them a feather to help them with this quest in the first place.

"I merely come to offer you counsel," Arnold said, puffing his feathered chest out importantly, and staring down his beak at them. Eliot got to his feet, willing his hands to stop shaking as the last of the adrenaline left him. Quentin took Eliot's proffered hand without looking at him, getting to his own feet as well. Arnold still towered over them both, but it was a bit easier to maintain composure when he was standing firm, instead of sprawled on the ground with Quentin flung heroically on top of him.

"Counsel?" Quentin said. "I don't suppose there's any chance you'd hand over that feather?"

Arnold's eyes did something akin to twinkling, which Eliot took to mean he was amused, and not offended. "Unfortunately, not quite yet, my friends."

"Why?" Eliot asked, and stepped out of Quentin's reach to avoid the inevitable smack to his arm. He wasn't trying to be rude, he was just trying to understand.

"All will be revealed," Arnold said, and now Eliot was sure he was being purposefully enigmatic. "I've come to give you a word of warning about the dryads."

"Oh?" Eliot said, letting his frustration at Arnold bleed away. They'd get the feather when they got the feather, he supposed. Quest magic was weird. And any hints about their next challenge were not to be scoffed at.

"They are... unnerving beings, with an odd sense of - humor," Arnold said, tripping slightly over the last word. He blinked his yellow eyes at them a few times. "I cannot say for certain what they will ask of you, but just remember that all is not what it seems."

Eliot shot Quentin an exasperated glance and saw the expression mirrored back at him. He really wished people would stop telling them that.

"Okay," Quentin said. "Is that all?"

Eliot didn't try to smack Quentin for his own rudeness. Honestly, it was kind of hot.

Arnold ruffled his feathers, tossing his head from side to side in a self-important gesture. "I urge you to remember that there are larger forces at work, elements to this magic that cannot be written in a book, or cast with mere human hands."

"That's helpful," Eliot said. "And not at all vague."

"I am doing more than I should, by even coming here now," Arnold said significantly.

_ You might have saved yourself the journey _ , Eliot thought, spiteful. But then he sighed, realizing that Arnold was probably helping as best he could, even if it didn't feel like it from the receiving end.

"Okay," Eliot said. "Things are not what they seem, and there are greater forces at work." He was repeating the words like they were a lesson learned in school, and Arnold looked pleased. Or, Eliot thought he looked pleased. He was never clear on how to read a bird's expression.

"Very good," Arnold said. "I hope you know how much I want you to succeed."

"We do," Quentin said. "We don't mean to sound ungrateful."

For a moment Arnold stared down at them, his discerning eyes as piercing as ever. When the bird spoke again, his voice had gone softer, a note of compassion coloring his tone.

"Arielle is a lucky woman to know you both."

"Arnold," Quentin said suddenly, a note of urgency in his voice that Eliot couldn't interpret. "You were there, the last time this happened - to Rita, I mean. You saw the aftermath, right? Is Ari - is she going to be okay?"

Arnold didn't answer immediately. Eliot took a step towards Quentin and wrapped a tight arm around his shoulder, as Quentin put an arm around his waist and melted into his side. It was an attempt at comfort for Quentin and reassurance for himself, all at once.

"Rita had the people in her life who loved her the very most. They risked everything to get her back," Arnold finally said, slow and methodical. "And she was... content, eventually. But I cannot lie to you. Her experiences changed her forever. Made her less trusting, more afraid. The longer Arielle is in the grip of someone else's control, the more of herself she is giving up."

Eliot blinked, and had a sudden flash of Arielle swinging on the rope swing down by the creek near their cottage, her hair flying wild behind her, face flushed with elation. She loved swinging down and cannoning into the water, even in colder months. Teddy and Quentin would splash together in the shallows, and Arielle would swing by them, whooping in freedom and joy, and release, and splash, making Teddy giggle as the waves surged against him. Arielle was such a happy person, so free with her emotions, so open and honest and funny and sweet, and Eliot loved her so much.

"We'll get her out of there," Eliot said, a promise to himself, to Quentin, to Arnold, to Arielle. He felt Quentin's hand bunch up hard against his waist, a promise of his own.

Arnold stared unblinking, and then nodded at both of them, as solemn as he'd ever been. "I believe you."

"Do you think..." Quentin said, swallowing audibly and shooting Eliot a nervous glance before looking back at Arnold, "next time you're in the neighborhood, if you could just - tell our son, we're working hard to get back to him, and we love him, and we hope he's being good for his grandparents?"

Eliot felt the prickle of tears behind his eyes, and blinked back against them. Arnold appeared mostly unaffected, although of course it was always hard to tell. "Of course," he said, as gentle as was possible for him. "When I have returned home, I will relay your message. Now, I'm afraid I must away. I've already stayed longer than I should have."

And with a quick farewell, Arnold lifted off from the forest floor, somewhat awkwardly beating back branches with his powerful wings as he took once more to the sky.

For a moment, Quentin and Eliot stared at each other, eyebrows raised. They heard rustling as Arnold continued his ascent, and then finally the normal sounds of the forest took over again, critters coming out of hiding now that the giant predator bird was no longer in their midst.

"Our lives are weird as shit," Quentin said, flat.

"Uh huh," Eliot agreed, and took Quentin by the arm to guide him further into the forest.

* * *

It took an additional two days of travel to near their next destination. With Arnold's words as a warning, they were cautious as they approached the grove where the supposed "sacred tree of the dryads" was located. Eliot had been slightly worried that it would be difficult to find the tree in question, given the density of the forest, but as they wound their way deeper into the forest, away from the comforting path, he could sense the changing magical energy around him.

"Do you feel that?" Quentin asked him, on the same page, as he so often was.

"Yes, it's like..."

"The trees are whispering," Quentin finished for him. He glanced down at the map, then up at Eliot. They moved even closer together, fighting their way through the increasingly dense foliage.

Eliot shivered, bringing a hand up to place it against the curve of Quentin's lower back. "What exactly do you know about dryads?" he asked.

"I mean... in the Fillory novels, they're not really mentioned. They're - atmospheric elements, not characters," Quentin said. "But more generally speaking, they're supposed to be... tree nymphs. The spirits of the forest. I have no reason to think they'd be hostile - "

"No reason at all," a voice suddenly sounded from right behind them.

Eliot jumped, Quentin yelped. They both spun around, but there was nobody there.

"Hello?" Quentin said, and Eliot was freaked out enough that he didn't even tease him for the squeak in his voice.

"Hello," the voice said again, and this time Eliot saw the speaker. She was nearly human in shape, although something about her eyes, her movements, evoked a serpent more than a woman. He hadn't noticed her at first, crouching above them on a branch of a tree, leering over them with a solemn yet open expression. "You are nearing our heart, questers."

Eliot took a small step forward, trying to get between Quentin and the dryad. Quentin kicked his ankle and stepped forward too. "We - um. Require something from your sacred... tree," he said, uncertainly. "If you could tell us - "

"Oh yes," the dryad interrupted, blinking solemnly down at them. There was a whisper of noise to their left and Eliot looked around and nearly cried out - there were more of them, fading forward from the surrounding greenery, their skin shifting through shades of greens and browns, their eyes bright and black and piercing. They had come from nowhere and were suddenly everywhere, and Eliot felt his stomach swoop at the thought of how long they must have been close by, watching them walk through the woods. "We know what you seek. And you are very close."

"Great," Eliot said. "That's - great. Do you require... payment, maybe? Or - "

The dryad frowned, and Eliot gulped, looking down at Quentin. Quentin shrugged back at him, at a loss. "We have no need of any payment you humans might offer to us."

"So we can keep going, then," Quentin said, sounding just as uncertain as Eliot felt. The dryads all blinked at them again, silent and eerie in the damp forest air.

"Right then," Eliot said. "Uh. Let's - carry on, Q."

They did, gripping hands and making their way towards the tree. It was nearing dusk, and Quentin had the map so close to his face that his nose was almost touching the page. Eliot was fairly certain he didn't need to keep consulting it, but he couldn't blame him for wanting something else to focus on. Eliot was doing his best to stare straight ahead and ignore the dryads, who weren't following them in any strictly obvious way, but who occasionally darted out along a tree branch in a skittering motion and stared down at them, or appeared shadow-like from the leaves of a low bush, blinking in that severe, solemn way of theirs.

Ahead, there was an increase of ambient light, and a slight lessening of the thickset trees. Quentin finally put the map down, and squeezed Eliot's hand hard enough to hurt. Each steadfastly ignoring the dryads still marking their every step, they entered a small clearing. Directly across from them was... a tree.

Eliot could not have said precisely what made it different from any other tree in the forest. It was large, certainly, but there were others of its size. Its trunk was straight and strong, its leaves verdant and nearly glowing with health. In fact, the whole tree was glowing. But not visually, exactly - it was more like a sense, a vibration that Eliot could feel through the tree's roots all the way to where he was standing, fifteen feet away. The tree was magic, and not magic the way that everything in Fillory was. It was made of it, every inch. Eliot shivered at the feeling - heady, intense, almost frightening in its distilled power.

"Shit," Quentin breathed next to him. "I take it this is the dryad's sacred tree."

"I sure as fuck hope so," Eliot said. "It's sacred in some way, at least as far as I'm concerned." When Quentin didn't answer him, he looked down to see his sardonic raised eyebrows, even in the dim light. "Well, I'd call it sacred if I went in for such things." Quentin gave him the tiniest of smiles, reaching up to brush a strand of hair out of his eyes.

"Your irreverence is as charming as ever, Eliot."

"I'm incapable of being anything other than charming," he said, trying to smile back. It was something of a feeble come-back, but it didn't matter. Just the illusion of normal banter was keeping the worst of the fears away.

"So," Quentin said, clearing his throat. "Do we just... scoop up some dirt, then?" he took a couple of bold steps towards the tree, and Eliot glanced sharply around him, anxious that the dryads might suddenly attack. But everything was still, and Eliot followed Quentin until they were standing directly in front of the dryad's sacred tree. He thought, then, of Bella and the original Rodney. Rita's lover and her brother, standing before this very tree. He thought of how worried they must have been for their loved one, how brave they were to take on this task without even the benefit of magic as protection.

"Let me," Eliot said quietly, as Quentin dug out the second magical jar from his pack. Eliot was prepared to argue - if Quentin had done the water, it was surely his turn to risk untold consequences - but it proved unnecessary. Quentin hesitated for only a moment but then handed the jar over.

As he knelt towards the roots, he felt Quentin shift behind him, standing to guard his back from the dryads. Eliot chanced a glance to either side and saw them, still half-hidden in the trees around the clearing, as attentive as ever. He unscrewed the lid to the jar, and, using his fingers as a crude shovel, loosened some of the soil, scooping it into the jar. It felt just about as silly as collecting the water had looked, when Quentin did it. He was half-convinced, in moments like this, that this entire quest was some sort of elaborate prank, and that when they'd finished collecting their ingredients, they'd have nothing more to show for it than some stale river water, clumps of dirt, and frayed bird feathers. With Quentin tense and ready just behind him, Eliot screwed the lid of the jar on, and, still kneeling, performed the series of tuts to seal the jar closed. Instantly, it started to glow blue, like the jar of water they had already collected. He stood, clutching the jar in both hands, tight to his chest.

The dryads were still watching them.

"Well," Quentin said, voice strained in the silence. "I guess we'll just be... on our way, then."

They took a few steps forward, back the way they had come. Eliot felt the shivers of magic still reverberating from the tree behind him. They were nearly back at the edge of the clearing, about to re-enter the thickset forest, when the dryads took a deep breath.

And then all of them, in chilling unison, released the breath in a loud, discordant screech, their eyes popping and their teeth bared.

" _ You have retrieved that which you seek _ ," one of them hissed. " _ What will you do to keep it? _ " Eliot spun around, trying to find the speaker, but he couldn't - the dryads didn't all look the same, other than their strange bulging eyes and mercurial skin-tone, but in that moment they were blended together, a miasma of frightening intensity.

"Um," Quentin gulped.

"Q," Eliot said, taking a step closer to him and grabbing at his wrist. "Maybe we should - "

One of the dryads let out a cackle and darted forward along an extended tree branch. Eliot noticed for the first time that their fingernails were very, very sharp.

"Run?" Quentin suggested, breathless and pitchy.

"Run," Eliot agreed, and then stumbled backwards as one of the dryads lunged at him, scraping a hand down the front of his chest, ripping through clothes, a sharp line of pain extending from collarbone nearly to navel -

" _ Run _ !" Quentin repeated, grabbing at Eliot's arm. He didn't need to be told twice. he turned, pushing at Quentin's back to steer him ahead, their clothing catching on tree branches as they veered away from the clearing back towards they'd come, hearing the renewed screeches of fury from the dryads behind them.

"What the fuck," Eliot called over his shoulder. "We asked you what you wanted in exchange - " he cut himself off with a yelp as another dryad practically slithered out from the roots of a tree as he passed, hands grasping for his ankles. For a moment she caught hold of the edge of his boot and he thought he was going down, but then her hand was gone and he stumbled forward, still somehow miraculously on his feet.

"Is this part of the challenge?" Quentin called over his shoulder, still tripping and slipping his way through the dense woods, his voice high in alarm. Eliot wasn't sure if he was asking him, or the dryads themselves, but in either case, nobody answered. Eliot didn't have the extra breath to keep up a conversation. His heart was pounding in his throat, in his temples, in the pads of his fingertips where his hands were grasped protectively around the glass jar, containing the precious dirt that apparently the dryads didn't want to see taken.

"Shit, shit, shit," Eliot said, fighting for some semblance of control. They were in the middle of the woods, miles away from any real break in the trees. They couldn't be any more  _ in the dryad's territory _ if they'd planned it this way.

Blindly, gasping, fighting for every inch of distance between themselves and their pursuers, they ran further and further from the clearing of the sacred tree, just trying to put distance between themselves and their pursuers, clearly audible as they screeched out their unholy anger. He knew they were dryads, but the sound of their yells and hisses of fury were putting Eliot more in mind of banshees than anything else, and he wished suddenly that he'd listened more carefully when Quentin had told him about all the various mythological women-creatures and how western culture's anxieties about women tended to manifest in sexist tropes, repeating motifs throughout history -

"We'll never outrun them!" Quentin shouted at his side, pulling him out of his semi-hysterical thought spiral.

Eliot tossed one hand out behind him, blindly aiming a shot of magical energy behind him, and heard a thump as the spell made contact, hopefully taking out one of the nearest pursuers. If only he wasn't holding the damn jar in his hands, he'd be able to maneuver better -

"Q, catch," he said, and when Quentin turned to the side, he tossed the jar over to him. Quentin fumbled it as it hit his hands but then gripped it tight, just as Eliot swung fully around to send a more powerful blast out of both of his hands.

"Jesus, El," Quentin said, breathless and angry, "I could have dropped - "

"Well if we get eaten by a pack of dryads I don't think - "

"They're not going to eat - "

"Just fucking  _ run _ !" Eliot said. He wanted to stop and face the dryads, give Quentin a real chance to get ahead of them and escape, but he knew what the result would be if he tried that. The second he slowed down to shoot off a fresh spell, Quentin slowed down with him, to match his pace, only speeding up again when Eliot did so as well. There would be no heroic stand today, no matter how badly the fear was thrumming through Eliot's veins, the imperative necessity of getting Quentin out of danger at any cost.

They kept running, evading the dryads by mere feet, listening to their discordant yells of anger and excitement. Eliot wasn't sure where they were going, and just hoped that Quentin, who had studied the map more than him, had a vague sense of direction. The adrenaline pumping through him was fueling his energy, but he knew that wouldn't last forever - they needed a plan, a better one than just running away from grasping hands and angry screams, something that would hide them, or stop the dryads, something -

Quentin yet out a yelp to his left and Eliot's heart jumped into his throat - he turned, his hands already out ready to repel any nearby attackers, but Quentin had handled the problem already, his hand shoving forward and a burst of energy cascading out of his palm, while his other hand cradled the precious jar to his chest. The dryad hissed in anger as she was slammed back against the nearest tree trunk, but Quentin was out of her range now, his pace kicking up just that much faster - "El, I think I know a place we can go," he gasped, turning slightly through the dense foliage and steering them further away from the clearing they had just left, back in the vague direction of the riverbank.

Eliot didn't have the breath to question him, just nodded at Quentin's back and followed. It had only been minutes since they'd started to run, and it felt both instantaneous and like they'd been going for hours. There was a nagging sensation in the back of Eliot's brain, one that told him that the dryads were fucking with them. They had every possible advantage. There were dozens of them, and they could shift and slide through the dense forest without a sound, unnaturally quick and graceful. If they wanted Eliot and Quentin, surely they'd already have -

Eliot followed Quentin through a tangle of branches and popped out into a blank space, surprised at the absence of further foliage in front of him. And then he actually stopped for a moment, blinking in astonishment at the view before him. Quentin had led them to the edge of a ravine, the forest continuing deep and verdant and dark below them, the ground sloping just slightly down to the edge of a sheer drop. Quentin had paused too, spinning around and grabbing at Eliot's arm to tug him a few feet away from the treeline they had just exited.

"They don't move far from the trees," he said. "I think they're linked to them somehow, this gives us some space to - " Quentin cut himself off as a few of the dryads poked their heads out of the trees in front of them. They were all hanging from tree branches, leaning out over the clear space, but Quentin was right - none of them were letting go of the branches, and if Eliot and Quentin stepped out further into the clearing beside the ravine's edge, they were out of the dryad's reach.

"Um, Q," Eliot said, low-voiced. "Does this plan of yours have a part two?"

"I was hoping you might have had a brilliant brainwave," Quentin whispered back, taking another nervous step backwards, further away from the staring dryads, towards the drop-off of the ravine.

"You're trapped," one of the dryads, or maybe several of them, hissed in an oddly harmonious tone.

"Or maybe we've reached an impasse," Eliot said, pleased to hear that his voice was hardly shaking at all.

"It's almost charming that you think that," the dryad, or dryads, responded quickly, and Eliot glanced to look at Q as he heard a quick gasp, and followed his gaze - the dryads had fanned out, leaning out of trees all around them in a half-circle. The only non-dryad-filled space was directly behind them, at the steep edge of the ravine.

"What do you want from us?" Quentin asked. "We - we asked you what you needed, you didn't tell us - "

"I want you to know what you're up against," one of the dryads said. The ones Eliot could see from here hadn't moved their mouths, and the sound seemed to be coming from all of them and everywhere at once, whispering through the very leaves.

"And what are we up against, exactly?" Eliot said. The only thing in his head was that he should keep them talking, and that somehow a good idea would come to them as they stalled. He took a few purposeful steps backwards, keeping his eyes on the dryads, and then, when he was close to the ravine's edge, he looked down, cursing mentally at the sheer and unforgiving drop, at least one hundred feet to a tangle of thickset vegetation below. If they had a rope, and time to go slow, maybe they'd be able to scale it, but there was no way with the dryads tailing them. Not even Eliot's telekinesis would allow him to fly for such a sustained period of time, and certainly not with another person.

He took a few steps back closer to Quentin, away from the edge. They were all staring at him, having ignored his most recent question. For a few seconds there was silence, or as close to silence as you could get in a forest teeming with life.

And then - chaos. One of the dryads jumped off of her branch and came screaming towards him. Vaguely, he heard Quentin let out a shout -  _ no!  _ \- from next to him, but then the dryad had latched on, her fingers digging hard into his arms, her smile wide and sinister.

Eliot's magic reacted almost without his permission, spilling out of him and scalding along his palms. He gripped the dryad's arms and she let out a hiss of pain, her own grip loosening enough that he was able to shove and then kick her away. He spun at once, to see that one of them was lunging for Quentin, who was still cradling the jar against his side as he tried to repel her with one hand. He darted forward to help and his own attacker grabbed at his wrist, hard, yanking him back.

For a while there was only harsh breathing, Eliot fending off the dryads, who apparently  _ could  _ part themselves from their trees, but only for a few seconds, and turning to look at Quentin over his shoulder, desperate to escape his own attackers to go and help him. The dryads seemed to be in endless supply; every time Eliot got a good hit on one, she would fade back into the trees, only to be replaced by another, fresh and ready for battle. Leaves shook, branches crackled, Quentin grunted and swore as he pushed back against the dryads - sweat rolled down Eliot's brow and into his eyes, and he blinked it away, furious and scared and -

There was the sound of harsh impact, body hitting body, and Eliot wrenched free of his latest attacker and turned around in time to see Quentin stumble a few paces backwards from the force of a dryad's latest blow. He surged forward, acting on instinct to reach Q, and from behind him heard a melodious laugh - "I want you to watch," the dryads said. " _ Watch _ ."

And he did. He watched as the dryad attacking Quentin lunged towards him again, as Quentin took another faltering step backwards, off balance -

" _ Quentin _ , look - " Eliot started to say as he moved towards him, but he didn't finish the thought, the words choking off and turning to ash in his throat. His hands had sprung forward from his body, his telekinesis grasping desperately at Quentin, but he couldn't get a hold, it was all happening too fast - he could only stare in unutterable horror as Quentin's foot caught the edge of the drop-off, and he vanished from sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun dunnnnnn.
> 
> I take great joy in being able to provide you with a *literal* cliffhanger. The next chapter is my favorite that I've worked on so far! See you next week. :)


	13. Chapter Thirteen - In Which Eliot Re-Evaluates His Priorities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild content warning here. Nothing too extreme or out of line with the rest of the story, but Eliot does not exactly process what just happened at the end of the last chapter particularly well. I thought I should give you a head's up... but everything's okay, folks. As promised.

**ELIOT**

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're in a near death situation. It was a cliche, and one that Eliot had never found to be true. Any time he himself had been close to death in the past, everything had happened far too quickly for anything approaching coherent reflection.

But now. This? For the first time in his life, he knew what people meant when they said that.

Quentin went over the side of the ravine, and he saw it all.He saw himself returning, shattered and hollowed out, to collect Teddy from his grandparents, forced to explain to his son that not only had he failed to rescue his mother, but he'd also gotten his father killed in the process. He saw himself trying to limp forward through life, desultory and exhausted, working on the mosaic but afraid every second that he might actually solve it, leaving Teddy in a world without all three of his parents. He saw himself sleeping alone at night, curled into a ball and trying to muffle the sounds of his crying so he wouldn't upset Teddy - pictured growing old, alone, never able to seek any of his old damaging coping mechanisms, never recovering, dreaming of Quentin and living in mortal terror that he'd wake up one morning having forgotten even a single detail of his face.

He'd never be happy, and he'd make Teddy miserable, and Quentin was fucking _ dead oh God _ \- if he just dove off of that fucking cliff right after him he'd be doing their son a favor, honestly.

His knees had given way, he was on the ground, sprawled out like he'd just been shot. He had no memory of getting there. He couldn't move. He wasn't sure if he was breathing. Didn't understand how he could be, given that his entire life had just been stolen from him. It was unbearable, in the realest sense of the world. He could not bear it. He could not believe it, could not accept it - 

"El!"

Eliot froze. Had he just heard -

But no, it was just his stupid, traitorous heart trying to torture him. He pulled himself forward, dragging clumsily towards the edge of the ravine. He had to look, had to see, even if the thought of actual visible proof made him nearly sick. He didn't see the dryads anywhere; they seemed to have vanished back into the trees as quickly as they had come. He didn't much care. It didn't matter where they were. It wouldn't have mattered if they came back and tore him limb from limb. Maybe it would be better if they did.

"_Eliot._"

This time it was louder. Too loud. Not a screaming echo from a shattered heart, but an actual sound, undeniable in its reality. He turned his head, looking up. It had seemed to come from behind him -

"Holy fuck," he croaked, incapable for the moment of anything more.

Quentin was behind him, clutched in the talons of a familiar eagle, hovering several feet off the ground. Eliot lay there frozen for another moment and then twisted around, scrambling to his feet on shaking legs. He kept his eyes locked on the impossible sight flying mere feet from him, unsure if his legs would hold him up as he started to lurch forward, his body moving automatically towards salvation.

"I have it," Quentin said, and he tossed down the jar containing the dryad's dirt. Eliot caught it on instinct, and stared at it bewildered for a second, as Arnold's wings flapped slower, descending lightly until he was close enough to the ground for Quentin to drop down uninjured.

"Fuck, _ Quentin _," Eliot said. He'd forgotten all other words.

"Hey," Quentin said. He was breathing hard, his face blanched white in fear and something that looked like exhilaration. Eliot leaned down to drop the jar of dirt on the ground, careless in the face of Quentin in front of him. They were both moving on unsteady legs, taking a few stumbling steps closer to each other until they were within arm's reach. Eliot wanted to be touching him, but his arms had gone numb.

"I thought you were dead," he said, nonsensically, because - well _ duh _ that's what he'd thought. But it felt monumental somehow, that Quentin understand this - that Eliot had just spent approximately sixty seconds in a world where he really and truly believed Quentin was dead and yet somehow, unnervingly, his own heart had continued to beat. Which was _ wrong _ and _ crazy _and -

Quentin's face twisted in sympathy, and Eliot had just enough time to throw his arms wide as Quentin leapt for him and threw his full weight against Eliot. Eliot caught him, feeling the rush of living blood pumping suddenly through his body again. "Holy shit, Q, I wanted to die, I wanted to _ die _\- "

Quentin made a strained, frantic sort of sound, and locked his hands in Eliot's curls, pulling his head back and tilting his own so he they were eye to eye. "Don't," he commanded, leaning forward to peck Eliot lightly on the lips. And then he tried to pull out of Eliot's arms, which was just - frankly unacceptable.

"Q," he said, tightening his grip. "Q, oh my God, you went over, I thought - "

"I know. I know, honey, I'm sorry," he said, placating, "but right now I really need to tell Arnold thank you." Quentin pulled back, reaching a hand behind himself to grab Eliot's hand and gently extricate his fingers from the fabric of Quentin's shirt. Eliot let his hands drop away with extreme reluctance, because - oh yeah. Giant bird.

Eliot let Quentin drop back to his feet but kept an arm firm around his waist, willing himself to stop trembling. The eagle landed somewhat awkwardly among the thickets near the edge of the clearing, blinking regally at them both. Quentin bowed his head, and Eliot followed suit.

"Thank you, Arnold," Quentin said. "Your assistance was um - timely."

"You're quite welcome," the eagle said.

"Yes - thank you," Eliot said, heart still pounding in his throat. "You - you just saved my life, too, not only his."

Quentin wrapped an arm around Eliot's waist and squeezed, hard.

Arnold bowed. "The Ashmore family has been friendly with my own for generations. I told you that I could not hand you the answers, but I cannot stand by and watch you fail, either. While it is in my power to do so, you shall have my protection."

"Do you - " Quentin asked, biting his lip awkwardly. Eliot wanted to _ devour _ him. He was freaking the fuck out. "Do you have any power of influence over the dryads of this forest? We've offended them, I'm afraid." It was so goddamn cute that Quentin started talking all formal and Fillorian whenever he came face-to-face with any of the more regal creatures of the land. He might have lost this, the sound of Quentin’s voice. He nearly had. Fuck.

"Indeed," Arnold said, inclining his feathered head. "This forest is not my natural home, but I am respected by many of the people here. I can have a word, and guarantee that you pass through the rest of these woods unmolested."

"Thank you," Eliot said again. "This means so much to both of us, truly." His politeness was automated, his brain fulfilling basic commands while the majority of himself focused just on breathing, on remembering how that was supposed to work.

"Although you should know, the dryads will have no more quarrel with you. They are merely doing their part for the quest," Arnold said.

"What?" Eliot said, the word catching and rough in his throat. "They - they tried to kill him, they - " he swallowed, a convulsive motion, and turned to the side, pressing his forehead hard into the side of Quentin's temple, ducking down to bury his face in Quentin's hair. He smelled good. He smelled alive. Eliot thought he might be about to collapse. Still couldn't feel his legs.

"They needed to test what you'd be willing to do - " Arnold began, but Eliot was barely listening to him.

"Fuck," Quentin said, dazed. He was petting a hand up and down Eliot's back and Eliot wanted it to be calming but it wasn't. Nothing made sense. He was so relieved he was giddy, but he also couldn't quite yank himself out of his own terror and desolation. It was still swirling within him, potent and aching and the worst thing he'd ever known.

"Fuck, did we..." Quentin was speaking, confused and trembling against Eliot. "Did we fail, then? I mean, we got the - El, where's the - "

"What?" he said.

"The dirt," Quentin said, trying to twist out of Eliot's arms to look at him, but Eliot didn't want him to move, couldn't understand the idea of not touching Quentin right now. It was an impossibility.

"It's..." Eliot said vaguely, catching strands of Quentin's perfect hair against his lips. "I set it down. I - Q, we need to get you somewhere safe, you need to lie down, or something, you just - "

"You did not fail," Arnold cut in. "In fact, I believe..." the bird hesitated, ruffling his feathers up. "There is one more way I may be of assistance." He flapped his wings a few times, shaking them hard enough that the generated wind pushed Eliot and Quentin both back a step. A single one of his over-sized feathers fell to the ground artfully at the bird's feet.

Quentin pulled forward away from Eliot, and with the greatest reluctance, Eliot managed to unclench his fingers from Quentin's arm and let him take a step forward, looking at the bird in askance. Arnold nodded again. "You have yet many challenges to face, but I can bring you one step closer with this symbol of my flight."

"I don't even know what to say," Quentin said, crouching and picking up the feather with reverence. "You do us a great honor."

If Eliot had had room in him for anything close to curiosity right now, he would have wondered what had changed. What had they done to earn this, when Arnold wouldn't give him his feather before?

"Your son is missing his mother," Arnold said. "It is my honor to assist where I may." And without another word, the majestic bird (who the fuck named an animal like that something like Arnold? it had always bothered Eliot) lifted off of the forest floor, his wings pushing back thick-set tree branches as he made his way up and out over the soaring expanse of forest spread out below them, and quickly out of sight. It might have been a beautiful view. Eliot couldn’t really process it.

"Well that was - something," Quentin said. "I've always been curious about flying, but honestly that was not as fun as I thought it would be." He sounded intentionally light, airy, like he was hoping to rush past the whole part where Eliot's heart had just been yanked violently from his chest, like maybe they could just ignore it and keep on with their day. Quentin took off his miniature pack and performed the tuts to expand it to normal size. Carefully, he removed one of the two remaining empty jars, and placed the feather inside of it. He scooted forward on his knees to grab the jar of dirt that Eliot had dropped, adding it as well.

Eliot just watched him, his brain fuzzing around the edges. His heart was still in his throat. His hands were shaking. He couldn't breathe. "Quentin," he said, and something in his voice must have sounded alarming, because Quentin looked up from the pack and spun to face him, eyes wide.

"El?"

"Quentin," Eliot repeated, totally helpless, and he reached for him, pulling him up from the ground and into a messy, frantic kiss. Quentin _oofed_ against his mouth and Eliot realized that without even meaning to, he'd pushed him back into the nearest tree, plastering every line of his body against his. "Q, oh God, you were gone - " Eliot said, the words muffled right against Quentin's lips. "You were fucking _ gone _ \- "

"Hey," Quentin said, petting his hands through Eliot's hair and trying to gentle the kiss. "Hey, El, I'm okay. I'm okay, I'm right here."

But Eliot couldn't be gentled. Not right then. He'd just experienced a terror that zinged through his blood and down through his bones. He'd almost _ lost this _ and just the idea of it was too frightening to believe. Quentin was everything to him. Everything. Not just his lover or his co-parent or his fellow quester or his best friend or his partner, but all of these things and more - the center of his universe in a way he'd never be able to describe. How had he never fully appreciated how scary that was before? To have all of your heart wrapped up in one person? It had been less than a minute, less than one single minute, and he'd had time to wallow in the agony of loss enough to know it was not survivable. He'd felt his heart crumble to ash, and he'd been powerless to do anything about it, despite the essential fact that the co-owner of that same heart, Teddy Coldwater-Waugh, needed him to keep it beating.

He couldn't do this without Quentin. He'd never fully realized that before, and now the whole idea that they'd both risked their lives out here to save Arielle felt like the kind of reckless they really should have considered with a lot more care. How could they have risked making an orphan of their son?

"El," Quentin said, urgent, and Eliot came to himself to find that he was clutching Quentin hard to his chest, his head buried in Q's neck. He was sobbing, and he had the strange idea that Quentin may have been saying his name for a while now. He shuddered, trying to control his breathing, and made himself relax his muscles, aware that he was probably squeezing Quentin hard enough to hurt.

"Sorry," he croaked. "Sorry. Fuck." His legs were shaking so badly that he knew Quentin and the tree were essentially supporting all of his weight, but he couldn't do anything about that right now. "Oh, God, Q, you can't ever leave me. You can't."

"Hey," Quentin said, still petting his perfect hands through Eliot's hair. "Hey, honey, I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere."

"You just got - fucking _ deus-ex-machina'd _, Q. You almost just plummeted to your death."

"Arnold's not a god, so, I don't know if that term really applies - "

"Quentin."

"I'm so sorry I scared you, El," Quentin said, rubbing his hands up and down Eliot's back. "I'm so sorry, honey."

Quentin only called him _ honey _when he was feeling especially tender and protective, which was basically how Eliot knew he must be a total mess right now. Gradually and with great effort, he got his breathing to calm down, and he stood, separating himself from Q enough to meet his eyes. He was still gripping his arms tight, and couldn't bring himself to let go. "I wasn't just - scared, I was - If you had - Q, I would have - "

"Don't," Quentin interrupted him, shaking his head. A few tears of his own dislodged themselves from his eyes as Eliot watched. "Don't say it."

"Okay," Eliot gulped. "Okay, but you know, right?"

"Yeah, El. I know."

It was hardly more than mid-afternoon, but considering they'd managed to get the Earth and one third of the Air ingredients all in one day, Eliot didn't feel too guilty about stopping. After walking a ways away from the edge of the ravine, back towards the river which had slowed to barely more than a trickle through this part of the woods, they stopped to get ready for the evening, marveling at the newly quiet forest. Less than an hour ago, the trees themselves had seemed to be hostile to them, but now, whether because of the quest itself, or Arnold's influence, the danger seemed to have mostly passed.

After setting up camp, they just sat together by the fire, huddled close, mostly silent. Eliot felt too traumatized and relieved to think of much to say, but his mind kept looping back around on the same thoughts again and again. He remembered the moment, the slip of Quentin's body, the way he'd vanished like nothing - no time to make a sound. And he couldn't stop thinking about what a risk they were taking, about how any day out here could be their last. Arnold had handed over a feather willingly enough. Would the owl and phoenix be as accommodating? And what about the witch's hearth-fire? And even when and if they managed to get all of those things, what about -

"El, you're thinking too hard," Quentin said, his head resting against Eliot's shoulder. They were leaning up against a tree trunk together. Eliot looked down to see that Quentin wasn't looking at him, staring instead at the flames of their campfire.

"That's usually your job," Eliot said, rubbing his cheek into the top of Quentin's head, to feel the bristles of his soft hair sliding against his skin. "But I can't help it."

"I know it was a close call today," Quentin said, and he sounded almost hesitant, like he was afraid Eliot was going to slip straight back into hysterics at any moment. Eliot wasn't entirely sure that he wouldn't, if he came right down to it. He felt raw and exposed in a way he'd never really known.

"Close call," Eliot repeated, dull. "That's - an understatement. I can't even tell you what it felt like, Q. I can't even possibly describe it to you."

"I can only imagine how I would have felt. I'm sorry."

"I just kept thinking about Teddy," Eliot said. "Like - what it would have been like to have to tell him. To explain it to him, to watch him grieve for you. That idea just kept - slamming into me. I know it was only a minute, but it felt like I had all the time in the world to imagine every horrible, unspeakable, crushing aspect of what this meant for me, of what I had to do now. Alone." Quentin didn't answer, just rubbed a hand up and down Eliot's arm as he spoke, offering silent support. It had always been so easy to talk to Q, even about impossible things. That ease, the comfort of knowing he'd be accepted and believed - it was another thing he'd almost lost today.

"I think we should try to get some sleep," Quentin finally said. Eliot glanced up at the canopy of trees above them. The sun was setting, but it was far too early for them to be turning in. Seemingly reading Eliot's thoughts, Quentin smiled at him, sincere and gentle. "We've had quite the fucking day."

Eliot didn't need much convincing. He let Quentin bank the fire, set up their tent, and go through his nightly ritual of checking their supplies. Three of the four jars now contained objects - the blue glow around the water jar and earthen jar lit up the interior of the tent with a friendly light. The air jar wasn't glowing yet - it needed all three feathers. And then, when Quentin deemed them ready to settle in for the night, Eliot pulled him down into his arms and kissed him.

Warm, and soft, and so very alive, Quentin sank into his embrace. There were words Eliot could have said, but didn't. Quentin knew everything important anyway. "I want - " Quentin said after a while, his lips ghosting against Eliot's in the dim interior of the tent. "El, I want you."

They went slow. Eliot touched every inch of Quentin's skin, marveling, reverent. Relief and joy mixed together, the pure pleasure of having Quentin in his arms suffusing every movement, every careful press of hands and lips. Quentin, who usually got impatient when Eliot was in an exploratory mood, didn't do anything to rush him along. By the time Eliot was sinking into Quentin's willing body, it was full dark outside their tent, the sounds of a forest at night cascading gently around them. Eliot kissed him through it all, moving into him with steady strokes as his lips brushed against every part of Quentin's face. "Q," he said. "Q, promise me."

He didn't know what he was asking. It didn't matter, Quentin answered him anyway. "Anything. Always." Quentin's breath had gone thready and thin, but Eliot wasn't ready for this to end - he made himself be still, buried deep inside of Quentin, and spent long, slow minutes kissing him, fucking into his mouth with his tongue, biting along his lower lip.

"Move," Quentin finally said, his voice strained with the effort of staying still. "El, please." And Eliot could deny him nothing. The pull of Quentin's body, the rhythm of him pushing and lifting up under him, was heaven. The best thing he'd ever known. He didn't want to think about this being gone, about a day in his life when he might have to face a future alone. But even as the pleasure crested inside of him, and Quentin cried out, his mouth dropping open, eyelids fluttering, Eliot couldn't stop thinking it. He could have lost this. He could have _ lost this _. It was inconceivable. It was the making of the end of him.

"Q," he said, and he couldn't say anything else. It was all that mattered. "Q, _ Q, Quentin. _"

"Yeah," Quentin said, his breathing coming out in hitching gasps. "God, El. I'm right there, I'm - "

"I love you," Eliot managed to gasp out, and he could only just hear Quentin's reply through the rushing in his ears as he came, every point of pleasure in his body rushing through and out of him, a cascading set of sensations, mixing his fear and relief together in a single moment of heart-stopping joy.

When it was over, he was too exhausted in body, mind, and soul, to move. Quentin cleaned them up, adjusted and scooted up and pulled a willing and pliant Eliot along with him until they were more comfortably situated among their blankets and bedrolls. Within minutes Eliot was falling into the pull of unconsciousness, his head pillowed right against Quentin's heart, the steady beat a lullaby that allowed him, at least in that moment, to relax into sleep.

* * *

Eliot made the mistake, the following morning, of discussing some of his fears with Quentin. He'd kept quiet during their quick breakfast and the breaking of camp, waited until Quentin had consulted the map and set them off towards their next destination, but eventually he couldn't help himself any longer, and he had to bring it up.

Quentin had not taken it well.

"I can't believe you're talking about just - giving up like this," Quentin said. His voice was brittle and disbelieving. "We've already got two of out of the four, and we're part way through the third."

"And then we have to - storm the fucking castle, Q," Eliot replied. He could feel himself starting to get angry, seriously angry, and he bit back on it as tightly as he could. He didn't want to give up. He just wanted to be honest about what exactly they were risking here. It was one thing to know in an abstract sort of way that this quest was dangerous. It was another to watch the love of his life plummet to his death right in front of his eyes, and - "You were dead. I thought you were - and there's still so much that could go wrong. I'm not saying let's pack our bags and turn around. I'm saying we should - talk about it."

"What's the alternative?" Quentin asked. He was walking through the overgrown path in an unnecessarily aggressive manner, tree branches slapping back and nearly hitting Eliot in the chest as he hurried after him. "We just turn around, go back to Teddy, and say - sorry son, your mom's soul is just going to have to stay enslaved for eternity, because we got a little scared?"

"Okay, so we're not going to have a real conversation about this, then," Eliot said, pissed off. "About you almost dying."

"We had a real conversation about it yesterday," Quentin said.

"No, yesterday I cried all over you and then fucked you and then we fell asleep. Where exactly was the conversation part?"

"You know, sometimes I miss the days when you were a stubborn dick who didn't want to talk about your feelings, instead of a stubborn dick who wants to discuss everything ad nauseam - "

"You're the one who fucking fixed me, Q, so you only have yourself to blame."

"I just don't see the point of discussing this when we both know there's only one option we'll be able to live with."

"_ Live _ being the operative word," Eliot said, his frustration banking slightly in response to Quentin's irritated tone. It was one of the reasons they worked so well together as a couple. When Quentin got agitated, Eliot's imperative instinct was to keep calm. When Eliot was worked up, Quentin was the one who was gentle. Even when sometimes, like apparently when the situation was literally life or death, it was a lot harder to temper his responses. "Q, I hate to bring this up, but we don't even really know if what we're doing is going to work."

And that, of all things, was what got Quentin to stop. "What does that even mean?" he said, whirling around to face him.

"This soul spell," Eliot said, trying for a slow, methodical explanation. "The idea is that Arielle's soul is trapped somewhere, and she's being controlled, right? Well, we're operating under a lot of assumptions here. That we've got the spell exactly right, that Aunt Rita isn't just some crackpot old lady."

"After everything we've seen," Quentin said slowly, "do you really think that's possible? The Watcher, the dryads, Arnold... all of them have been pretty knowledgeable about this quest, for it to all just be bullshit."

"Okay, fair point. But let's say we - let's say we do it, we find this owl and the phoenix or whatever, and we get all of this shit. Then we still have to go to Whitespire and get Arielle. That's supposing that whoever's done the magic to capture her soul is keeping it inside the castle with her."

"If it's Taseer, then it's either at the castle or at his estate - "

"And if Taseer's being controlled too?"

"Then it's the consul," Quentin said. He was repeating a conversation they'd already had. They'd already talked over and under and around every aspect of this theory together, and Eliot could sense the frustration underlying Quentin's attempts at rational response.

"Okay, and if it's the consul?" Eliot prompted.

"If - then - what? What about if it's the consul?"

"Quentin, we've been talking and talking and _ talking _about how to get these fucking ingredients, but what are the actual odds that the two of us are going to be able to take on Toramond Pickwick by ourselves and rescue Ari and Taseer? If, in fact, that's even really what's going on here? We are in so far over our heads, Q."

"That's been true from the second we agreed to take this on," Quentin said, arms crossed.

"Yeah, and if you'll recall, I was apprehensive about it from minute one."

"That's bullshit," Quentin said. "Neither of us was particularly jazzed about the idea of going off on some magical scavenger hunt to save Arielle. It's not how I'd prefer to be spending my time, but we both agreed, together, that it was necessary. You're just getting cold feet because of - "

"Isn't it?" Eliot said.

"Isn't - what?" Quentin said, confused.

"Isn't it how you'd prefer to be spending your time?" Eliot couldn't have said where the words were coming from, but they were there - fully formed ideas spilling out of his mouth without his permission. Quentin's face went stormy, and Eliot knew - he _ knew _ he'd made a mistake, but he still couldn't close his eyes without seeing Quentin fall, without feeling that gut-punch, the nausea of total, blinding loss. And Quentin wasn't taking him seriously.

Or rather, he _ hadn't _ been taking him seriously. Until right the fuck now. They were standing in the middle of the rough forest footpath, trees pressing in on all sides, roots digging up under their feet. Now that neither of them were speaking, Eliot could hear the ambient noise of the forest's many creatures around them, birds twittering in the trees, the scurrying of small critters through the undergrowth. There were several long beats of silence between them, and then -

"Do you want to run that by me again?" Quentin said, cool as ice.

"This is your thing, Q," Eliot said, his throat aching as if he'd been screaming. "Quests and magic and Fillory and giant talking birds. Saving a damsel in distress. Impossible odds. You - you eat this shit up. You can't pretend that's not true."

Quentin's jaw twitched. "I'd pay to be in the room when you tell Ari you referred to her as a 'damsel in distress."" It sounded like a joke, but Eliot knew it wasn't. Quentin huffed out a frustrated breath of air and pulled a hand through his hair. "She's the mother of our child."

"Yes," Eliot agreed. "And I would do anything - within reason - to save her."

"What does that even mean, within reason?" There was a near mocking lilt to Quentin's voice now, and Eliot blinked back another after-image, the look on Q's face as he'd fallen, eyes widened in shock, and then nothing, no noise, no chance -

"I mean that you fell off of a cliff yesterday, Quentin!" Eliot yelled. Okay, so maybe he wasn't as in control of his emotions as he thought. "I'm _ losing _ it, okay? I'm losing it. If you fucking die that is _ it _ for me, I'm _ out _."

"Eliot, Jesus," Quentin said. He sounded almost annoyed, but he was coming forward to touch him. "I'm okay. I'm right here, and I didn't die."

"By sheer fucking chance."

"You really think that? You don't think - " Quentin bit off, looking frustrated. "You don't think we're supposed to succeed?"

"Oh, God," Eliot said, rubbing a tired hand over his face. "Oh, God, Quentin, that is a whole different conversation. What happened to 'destiny is bullshit'?"

"Don't quote me back to me," Quentin said, a frown on his face. "El, let's just - cut the crap here. What exactly is it you're telling me? Do you want to turn back? Give up?"

"No."

"Okay, so then..."

"I want - " Eliot swallowed. "I want you to stop thinking you're invincible because you're pure of heart or whatever weird shit it was that Rita told us. I want you to be careful. I want you to survive and be safe and happy and live to be one hundred."

"I'm being careful."

"You _ fell _\- "

Quentin leaned up and kissed him to shut him up. Which, honestly, may have been fair. There's only so many times you can remind a person that they'd nearly plummeted to their death less than twenty-four hours earlier. Eliot let himself be calmed down, let Quentin kiss away the immediacy of fear and anger and desperate uncertainty. When he pulled back, Quentin was looking at him with something that was nearly pity. But Eliot was feeling a little bit pitiable at the moment, and found he didn't mind.

"Eliot. I can promise you that I would much rather be at home with you and our son. I'm not out here for the thrill of it."

"I know that," Eliot said, slightly ashamed. "But can you please just acknowledge that you've been a bit too ready to run in to danger headfirst, since this whole thing started? The river, the dryads..."

Eliot knew Quentin well enough to recognize the flash of resistance in his eyes. He wanted to push back. Eliot could see the list of arguments queuing up on Quentin's tongue - _ time is of the essence _ and _ this quest is made from magic _ , _ we have to trust in that _ and _ I want to get back to Teddy. _ But Quentin, as it transpired, also knew Eliot very well. Which was why, Eliot was sure, Quentin swallowed back on all of that, and took a deep, fortifying breath.

"Okay. I can admit that I've been riding the high of having a plan, of... of having a goal that feels _ possible _." The utter impossibility of the mosaic was implied. "But it's not just that," Quentin continued. "I feel - I feel like we can do this, like we're strong enough together to pull this off. There's this sense I have about it. Not just blind faith, something - bigger than that."

"That's all well and good," Eliot said. "The optimism torch thing. I get it. But you - Q, I'm scared, okay? I'm fucking terrified. I feel like I can't take a deep breath, I can't get a handle on it. You have to swear to me that you'll be careful. And if it comes down to losing your life or giving up on the quest, you'll - "

"I can't make that promise," Quentin said, voice suddenly tight with emotion. He'd abandoned his cajoling tone of moments ago, and was looking up at Eliot with brittle determination in every inch of his body.

"I'm _ asking _you, Quentin," Eliot said. He made himself meet Quentin's eyes, poured every ounce of love and fear that he could possibly summon into his gaze. Quentin had taught him how to honor how he was feeling, how to trust in it, and how to communicate it clearly. He was not above taking advantage of that skill when it really mattered. "I'm begging you to take care of yourself."

"Teddy needs his mother," Quentin said, but his eyelids were fluttering, his lips quivering. "He doesn't need me, he needs _ her _, he needs - "

"Q," Eliot interrupted, something akin to horror blooming up in his chest. Whatever frustration he was feeling at Quentin's stubbornness had cracked away, and he was left floored in the face of an insecurity he'd never known Quentin to possess. "What are you talking about? You're an amazing father, of course Teddy needs you."

"I'm not saying..." Quentin started, winding his arms around his stomach protectively. "I know Teddy loves me, I'm just - Arielle's the one who knows what she's - Arielle's the one who's Fillorian, like Teddy. We can't necessarily always be there for him. She's the one who belongs here, El."

"We belong here," Eliot said, struck by the rightness of the words even as he spoke them. He took a step forward and tugged on Quentin's arms until he released his hold on his own torso, leaning in gratefully to Eliot's embrace. "We belong with Teddy, Quentin. We do. And Arielle does as well, and if we can bring her home for him, and for us, we'll do it."

Quentin burrowed his face against the front of Eliot's shirt for a moment, and Eliot had another one of those blinding flashes of panic, remembering the burning need to fling himself after Quentin, to throw his body down the side of the ravine so he could be with his partner, where he belonged. He tightened his arms and ducked down to place a kiss to the top of Quentin's head.

"El," Quentin said. "We both knew this would be dangerous."

"I... know," Eliot said, trying to think of how to explain himself. "I know that, I just..."

"Thought you'd be able to dive heroically in front of any problem we came across? Make me be the one to suffer without you, instead of the other way around?" Quentin's voice was muffled against Eliot's chest, and despite the harshness of the words, he didn't sound unduly angry. "You can be a massive hypocrite, you know that?"

"No," Eliot said. "I mean - yeah, you know I'd die for you. That's not a question."

In a flash of self-awareness, Eliot almost laughed. Jesus, they were just standing there, wrapped up in each other in the middle of this forest, when they really should be following the map along, hurrying to their next destination. Every moment they wasted was a moment Arielle was in trouble, was a moment away from their son. But right now, it felt important to say these things, to clear the air, to hold Quentin to him as tight as possible and feel the press of a warm and living body against him. "But I'd also do anything in the world to stay alive for you, Q. If I had to give up the quest to save my own life, I'd - I'd do that. I'd never make you lose me if I had any say in the matter."

Quentin let out a small huff of air, the breath warm against Eliot's collarbone just above the line of his shirt. He rolled his forehead forward for a moment and then stood back, looking up at Eliot with a wry expression on his face. "That's not fair, and you know it."

"I never agreed to play nice, Q. Not when your life is at stake." He said it like a joke. It really wasn't.

Quentin blinked at him for a few moments, his lips turned down into a frown. Then he stood on tip-toe to reach Eliot's mouth, kissing him with infinite softness, a kind of tenderness that Eliot could feel pooling deep in the pit of his stomach. "Okay. Your point is taken, Eliot. I won't - I'll do everything in my power to stay alive, even if it means - "

"It won't come to that," Eliot said, with a lot more conviction than he felt. "I'm not about to give up on Arielle lightly. You know that, don't you?"

Quentin nodded at him, a slight crease between his eyebrows. "We should be moving."

"Okay," Eliot said. "Okay. Next stop, another creepy giant bird."

He slid a hand down Quentin's arm and tangled their fingers together, while Q pulled the notebook out of his pocket with his other hand, flipping it open easily to the map. "You're calling Arnold creepy now?" Quentin asked. "How quickly you forget your gratitude for the whole saving-my-life thing."

"Oh, we are so not joking about that yet, Q," Eliot said, squeezing Quentin's hand tight in retribution. Quentin just laughed at him, and tugged him forward along the path.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Before they reached the owl, they had to avoid a number of annoying obstacles that Bella had helpfully detailed for them in her notebook. Most were easy enough to circumvent, even if Quentin cursed every maneuver that lengthened their trip even by a couple of hours. His longing for Teddy had become a constant ache, deep in his chest. But it was best, he and Eliot had agreed, to be cautious instead of rushing ahead. They made a wide circle around a deep pool that supposedly contained evil mermaids, despite Quentin's deep curiosity to see the creatures in question, and they slowed their pace to a crawl to avoid a colony of talking monkeys who apparently attacked anybody who made too much noise or stepped on the wrong twig or pile of leaves while in their territory.

It was another three days before they were close to the owl's supposed home-base, although Bella's notes had made it clear that the bird in question wasn't always just waiting around for questers to arrive. She and Rodney had apparently been forced to wait around for close to a week for the owl to show up.

He and Eliot had mostly recovered from the whole near-death thing, although Eliot was maybe holding his hand a little tighter than usual as they walked through the forest, and they were both being slightly more careful with each other than was typical. The truth was, Quentin felt... fine. Good, even. In the aftermath of his fall, he'd been so focused on Eliot's reaction that he hadn't had much time to process his own emotions about what had nearly happened to him.

The following night, after they'd argued about risking their lives and what amount of danger they were both willing to face for Arielle's sake, Quentin had felt the delayed reaction of shock overtake him. Eliot had held him through it as he shook through half the night, remembering the swooping sensation of free-fall, the way his breath had been punched out of him as Arnold's talons clasped on, how his sweaty fingers had somehow kept hold of the glass jar, and then - the sight of Eliot, sprawled on the ground, gasping and ashen-faced like he was dying, like his grief was literally killing him... all of it felt like something that had happened to someone else.

He understood Eliot's fear, he really did - he could imagine all too easily how he would have felt if Eliot had been the one to fall, and was mostly just trying not to think about it. But he also couldn't totally sympathize with Eliot's conclusions, that they should make a pact to give up on the quest if it meant risking death. Surely that was the point of something like this - the knowledge that every step they took to get closer to Arielle meant the possibility of sacrifice. He couldn't say these things to Eliot, though. He had a one-track mind about staying alive, and Quentin - well, he _ understood _. He did. But he also knew that being a good father to Teddy meant bringing his mother back to him.

"You'll give yourself wrinkles," Eliot said, nudging Quentin both literally and metaphorically out of his thoughts.

"What?"

"You were thinking so hard I could practically see the thought bubble."

"Oh."

"Are we okay?"

Quentin looked up at Eliot and smiled, genuine and full of love. "We're okay. I think we're almost there, actually," he said, glancing down at the map out of habit more than necessity.

"A couple more hours, right?" Eliot said, leaning over to study the map over Quentin's shoulder. "I don't suppose you found a page in there that explains what this owl's going to do to us?"

"Bella was as unhelpfully vague about that as usual. Detailed instructions on how to get there, absolutely nothing on what happened when they arrived."

"When we get home," Eliot said, forced-casual, "we are writing a fucking memoir about this whole quest."

"You mean _ I'm _writing a memoir," Quentin groused. "Or are you making a promise right here, right now, to actually write a book?"

"Oh, fuck no," Eliot said. "You're writing it. I'm a much bigger fan of oral tradition."

"I am not going to dignify that with a response," Quentin said, trying valiantly not to smile at Eliot's ridiculousness.

They passed the next few hours in joking conversation, the kind that Eliot was so good at, the kind that Quentin was grateful for. It was important to talk about the serious stuff, of course, but equally important for Quentin to get out of his own head every once in a while.

And then, sooner than Quentin would have liked, even with how eager he'd been to make progress, they were nearing the place that Bella and Rodney had marked on the map.

"I think this is it," Quentin said.

"Why are you whispering?" Eliot whispered right back, nudging Quentin in the arm.

"I don't know, it's just - progress feels good, doesn't it?"

"Maybe let's wait and see what this owl tries to do to us before we start celebrating," Eliot said, his voice tight.

Quentin shot him a glance. "I doubt it'll be throwing anybody off of cliffs, that's _ so _four days go."

"I swear to God, Coldwater..." Eliot said, a genuine warning in his voice, even as he offered Quentin a smile and tilted sideways to kiss him on the forehead.

"Ready?"

"Obviously not even a little bit," Eliot said, and then he took Quentin's hand in his again, and the two of them marched forward, struggling through a patch of thick trees and emerging into a section of forest unlike any they had yet encountered.

It was technically a clearing, a small patch of ground virtually free of debris and flora, but the trees surrounding it were so tall and close together that their lowest branches, tangled only ten or so feet above the ground, were blocking all hint of light from the sky above. It was like being in a bubble, or a cave made only of dense greens and browns. Above the treeline, Quentin knew it was just past midday, the sun bright and vivid in a clear sky. But here, beneath the cover of the trees, there was no hint whatsoever of daylight.

"This..." Eliot said, his voice hushed, his head ducked low as if he were afraid of hitting his head on the branches. "Does not look like a place that a bird would hang out."

"No it most certainly does not," Quentin said. "Do you think we - "

"Well, I don't live here," a voice said, echoing and nearly musical in the clearing. "In the parlance of you humans from Earth, I suppose you might say it's my office."

Eliot went still next to him, and Quentin followed his gaze. Emerging from the shadows on the other side of the clearing was a majestic owl, three times as tall as either of them, big yellow eyes shining bright in the dimness of the dark forest.

"Um, hello," Quentin said, summoning the courage from somewhere deep inside of him, from the place in his heart where Arielle belonged. He did his best to meet the owl's big, unblinking eyes. "We've come to ask you for a favor."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Progress is being made! See you back here next week. For all of y'all in the US, I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving.


	14. Chapter Fourteen - In Which Quentin and Eliot Accept Their Fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm nervous/excited about this chapter, because it expresses something that's been really important to me throughout this whole story, and I hope it lands for everyone reading. Also, as we pass 100k words with the posting of this chapter, I just wanted to say again, thank you so much for coming along on this journey with me! We've still got a ways to go, but happiness is waiting at the end, I promise!

**QUENTIN**

The owl had been disinclined to offer her name, but other than that lack of basic niceties, she'd been a perfect host. She'd settled herself comfortably in to a hollow at the base of a large tree, and invited Quentin and Eliot to sit facing her. Eliot was being slightly irritating, positioning himself halfway in front of Quentin like he was determined to take a talon in the face if it came to that, but thus far they didn't seem to be in any imminent danger.

"It's been some time," the owl began, as they settled themselves nervously to the ground. Eliot had a hand against Quentin's back, and Q wasn't sure if he meant it to be comforting to Quentin, or reassuring to himself. Maybe both. "Some time since I've had questers visiting my grove. Tell me about the one you seek to save."

Quentin glanced over at Eliot, hesitant, but cleared his throat when Eliot gave him a nod of encouragement. "Her name is Arielle. She's - our best friend."

"And lover," the owl said. Not as a question.

"Former," Eliot put in, cutting off Quentin's spluttering question as to how the hell this giant mystical bird could have known that.

"And you are willing to go to a great deal of trouble to get her back," the owl continued. "She is lucky to have friends like you."

"Right," Quentin said, swallowing against his nerves. "So if you know all that, you'll know we need one of your feathers in order to free her."

In the dim light of this odd dome-like clearing, the owl blinked a few times, sage and magisterial and completely unhelpful.

"Do you... think we could have one?" Quentin asked, trying not to squeak. Eliot's hand on his back moved up and down his spine in a comforting yet somehow condescending motion, and Quentin fought against the instinct to shoot him a glare.

"Oh, I think you probably could," the owl said, her voice smooth and low and beautifully frightening.

"Really?" Eliot said. "Just - like that?"

"Well of course it is a quest," the owl said, turning her gaze to Eliot, who shrunk back slightly under the directness of those wide golden eyes. "The magic will not work if I make it too easy for you."

"But why?" Quentin didn't mean to ask it, but he was tired of these esoteric conversations, the ones from the watcher, from homicidal dryads, from Arnold, from Rita. Why couldn't anybody just give them a straight answer, for once? Explain the magic at play, tell them the how and the why and their chances of success.

"Nature magic is complicated, but the basic principle is easy enough to understand," the owl said, cutting off Quentin's internal tirade. She sounded suddenly like a Brakebills professor, about to embark on a lecture. Quentin felt his spine straighten up instinctively, his fingers itching for a piece of paper. The owl continued - "it is magic operating on blind faith. You must trust in the quest, trust in your own perseverance. If the answers were handed to you, your mission would be unsuccessful."

"Bella's journal," Eliot said, just at Quentin was thinking the same thing.

The owl's eyes brightened. It was impossible to read expressions on her face the way you would on a human's, but Quentin could have sworn she was smiling. "One of the most tenacious young women I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. And yes, I told her the same thing I am telling you now. You cannot know the answers, you cannot know specifically what's to come. You must trust in the magic, or it will not work."

"So that's why she left out so many important details," Quentin said. "So as not to clue in any future questers."

"If she left a record of her quest, it would indeed make sense for her to leave some information out," the owl said. "It would have been the wisest course of action. For example, what does her account tell you of me?"

"Very little," Eliot admitted. He'd taken his hand off of Quentin's back and had twined their fingers together instead, resting comfortably against Quentin's knee. The dirt and leaves under them were dry and nearly soft, the dome of branches above them almost cozy. Quentin hadn't been sure what to expect when approaching this part of their quest. He was never sure what to expect, of course, but this... sitting here having a pleasant academic conversation with this amazing magical creature, hadn't exactly been in his top ten scenarios list. He'd been worried they were going to have to fight a giant winged bird literally known for its ties to wisdom.

"Bella's journal only told us where to find you, not what you would ask of us," Quentin said. " We need a feather from you to move on, and we're willing to pay for it."

"Of course you are," the owl said, that odd smiling tone back in her voice. "You would hardly have made it this far without being willing to face dangers and make sacrifices."

Quentin suddenly wished he was standing. The bird was easily three times Eliot's height, and sitting on the ground meant they had to crane their heads up even further to meet her large and luminous eyes.

"So what's the price?" Eliot asked, drilling down to the most salient question. He shifted his leg slightly so his thigh was pressed up against Quentin's. As always, Eliot's touch was grounding.

"You must make a sacrifice," the owl said. She ruffled her feathers up in a way that Quentin had seen Arnold do. On the giant eagle, the gesture looked self-important, even conceited. But here, in this domed clearing, with talk of quests and belief and journeys and sacrifices, the same gesture read as majestic, even menacing. Quentin pressed his leg harder into Eliot's. "A sacrifice befitting the soul you wish to save."

Eliot shifted away from Quentin and stood up, holding a hand down to help him to his feet as well. The owl still towered over them, naturally, but Quentin was right that standing up made him feel more empowered. "What's the sacrifice?" Eliot asked, his voice low and husky. He'd kept Quentin's hand tangled up in his own after helping him up. Quentin glanced up at his face to see the bunch of tension in his jaw.

"That is entirely up to you," the owl said.

"What?" Quentin cleared his throat, cursing the tight, high sound of nerves. "Whatever we want?"

"It must be something appropriately severe," the owl corrected, nearly gentle. "You must choose what to give up, and if the sacrifice is deemed worthy, I will grant you a feather."

Quentin turned away from the owl and looked up at Eliot, to find him looking back down, an eyebrow raised. They stared at one another for a moment, a silent conversation happening between them. Quentin's brain wasn't working properly. He was trying to think of something to say, some sacrifice that he could volunteer for the quest, but nothing was occurring.

"Do you have any suggestions?" Eliot asked the giant bird, still keeping his eyes locked on Quentin's.

The owl ruffled her feathers again, a shifting sound in the dim light of the clearing. "Well, one option would be another quester. In other words, one of you could agree to give up the other, to be permanently separated - I would grant you your feather and one of you could continue on your - "

"No," Quentin said, at the same time as Eliot said "What?!" in a tone of voice that was nearly furious.

"As I said, it's merely an option," the owl said, unperturbed.

"No, it's most certainly not an option," Eliot countered, his hand squeezing tight around Quentin's own. Quentin squeezed back.

"Definitely not."

The owl blinked slowly at them, big bright eyes piercing directly into Quentin's head. His heart was pounding from just the suggestion of such a thing. Eliot was his lifeline, in this world or any other. And as wretched as it made him feel to even think the thought, he'd give up on Arielle if the only way of getting to her was being permanently separated from Eliot. That had been the point of Eliot's lecture to him earlier that day, after all. Quentin could pretend all he wanted that he'd do anything to get Arielle back, but it wasn't true. It never had been.

"Very well," the owl said. "That is your prerogative. I've told you it's your own choice. But you must come up with an appropriately severe sacrifice, or I may not part with one of my sacred feathers."

Eliot and Quentin looked at each other for a moment.

"Can we - have a second to think about it?" Eliot asked. He was looking at Quentin, a searching, uncertain expression on his face. Quentin's mind was racing through the possibilities. There was a block of ice in his stomach. What were they supposed to give up? What would be severe enough for the owl to accept, and yet something that Quentin could survive?

"As much time as you need. I am in no hurry," the owl said. Her eyes were piercing, something nearly sardonic in the way she was regarding them. Quentin caught the implication - it was they who should be in a hurry. This quest was taking them longer than expected. They'd been away from Teddy for weeks already. Quentin took a couple of fortifying breaths and turned away from the majestic bird, tugging on Eliot's hand.

"Any miraculous brainwaves?" Eliot asked, when they'd exited the clearing. The forest, outside of that strange dome, seemed almost comforting in its uniform familiarity. Quentin couldn't be sure they were actually far enough away to be out of the owl's hearing, but then that probably didn't matter.

"I keep thinking of things it would kill me to lose," Quentin said. "Maybe I'm selfish, but I wouldn't even consider giving you up. Obviously giving up Ari would be defeating the whole point of this quest, and Teddy's out of the question."

"Right," Eliot said, his eyes black and haunted. "I mean, there are plenty of things I could give up if I had to, but none of them seem appropriate."

"It doesn't feel like it would be enough to say booze or a certain type of food, or sex, or - "

"Jesus, Q, I'm not giving up sex with you," Eliot said, sounding thoroughly scandalized. "Maybe that makes me the world's most shallow, selfish bastard, but - "

"No," Quentin said. "No, I know, I don't think I'd be able to do that either." He didn't actually feel all that bad about it - of course he'd still be with Eliot even if they couldn't be together physically for some reason, but they were both incredibly tactile beings. The thought of going without sex felt like a nearly fatal blow for their relationship.

"Okay... what about..." Eliot started, leaning his back up against a tree and tilting his head up. "Um."

"You have nothing," Quentin said.

"I have nothing," Eliot agreed, holding a hand out and tugging Quentin's wrist until Quentin fell against Eliot's chest. They stood there holding each other for a long moment.

"Something it'll hurt us to lose," Quentin said, hearing the familiar beat of Eliot's heart under his chest. "Something worthy of the love we bear for Arielle."

Eliot carded a hand through Quentin's hair for a moment. "You'd think, wouldn't you, that the two of us had already sacrificed enough."

Quentin's mouth turned down into an automatic frown. He knew instantly what Eliot meant, remembered with a familiar flash of pain the faces of his friends, people he carried in his heart, in the very center of him. He thought of Alice, of what she'd lost and what she'd been willing to do to get it back. He thought of Julia, of all she'd been through, of a struggle to find herself after trauma. Of Margo, how hard she always fought for Fillory.

"Oh, shit," Quentin said, the thought thudding into him like wet cement. "That's it." He pulled away from the warmth of Eliot's arms. He needed to not be touching him right now. He somehow felt that what he was about to say was a betrayal. He didn't deserve the comfort of touch while he broke Eliot's heart right along with his own.

"What?" Eliot said, his eyebrows scrunched together. He held a hand out, trying to reel Quentin back in, but Quentin spun on his heels, tugging a hand through his hair, pacing a short line between the dense trees. "Q, what?"

"That's what we give up, El," Quentin said, his voice shaking. "Them. Home."

"I - don't understand," Eliot said, but there was a waver in his voice that contradicted these words. "You mean - but how can we give them up? We've already lost them."

Eliot's hand, which had been reaching out towards Quentin, was now balled up at his side, his posture ramrod straight against the tree.

"We've told our son," Quentin began, horrified at himself. "We tell our son that someday he'll get to meet them. And maybe we both secretly know it's bullshit, that it'll never happen, but we - we let ourselves have that hope. That we're going to succeed, and - "

"You're saying we give up the quest?" Eliot interrupted, taking a step away from the tree and towards Quentin, his eyes dark and intense and disbelieving. "How the fuck can you even - "

"No," Quentin said, quiet and timid in the face of an anger from Eliot that he more than deserved. "No, not the quest. We keep going, we keep trying. And if we succeed - "

"We stay here," Eliot said. "That's what you're saying. Right now, we make a choice. We're never going home. Teddy's never going to meet Margo. Arielle's never going to meet your dad. All the stuff we've dreamed about. That's what you're saying to me right now."

"El," Quentin said, swallowing against the lump in his throat. "I'm sorry. Look, I'm open to other suggestions, it's just - "

"Fuck.  _ Fuck _ ," Eliot said, "That's fucked up. I can't - are you really asking me to - " he swallowed, stared at Quentin for a moment like he didn't recognize him, and then turned on his heels to storm away. His long strides carried him immediately into the dense woods, back the way they had come. He tossed a terse - "Give me a minute" - back over his shoulder, and then strode out of Quentin's sight.

Quentin stood frozen, staring at the spot where he had vanished. He knew Eliot wasn't really going to leave him here, knew that he was just storming off in a huff and was going to turn around and march back towards him in no time at all. That didn't mean it didn't hurt. Quentin walked backwards toward the tree that Eliot had been leaning against earlier, and rested his spine against it, wrapping his arms tightly around himself.

He hated himself for his suggestion, even as he wondered if it would even be enough. After all, what he was proposing was giving up something they didn't really have. They wouldn't be giving up Margo and Julia and Alice and the others. They'd really only be giving up  _ hope _ . And maybe Quentin could do it, give up on Jules and his dad and everyone else from the life before. But could he ask Eliot to do the same? To give up Margo, to give up Fen, his wife? It wasn't unreasonable to think that this was a hard line, one Eliot wouldn't touch.

But what else did they have to offer for the quest? He knew enough about this kind of magic to understand that it couldn't be a half measure. They couldn't walk in there and volunteer to give up sex for the next five years, or give up seeing each other for six months, or cut sugar out of their diet. It had to be something permanent, a real loss. And try as he might, Quentin couldn't shake the feeling that he'd figured out the only real answer to the puzzle.

He heard Eliot's return before he saw it. He'd been gone for barely five minutes when he crashed back through the trees to Quentin. He paused at the sight of Quentin, closing his eyes and bowing his head. "Sorry," he said, biting out the word.

"It's okay if you can't, El," Quentin said. "If it's too much. Hell, we could always go with the owl's first suggestion. Maybe I could go forward alone, and you could - "

"If that's supposed to be a joke," Eliot cut him off. "It's not fucking funny."

"I just - "

"Don't," Eliot said. "Don't, I'm - I'm sorry. It's just - you're right, and I kind of fucking hate you for that right now."

There was a not insubstantial part of Quentin that wanted to sink to the ground, curl his arms around his legs, bury his face in his knees and cry his eyes out. He also wanted Eliot to hold him, but that felt more selfish right now than it usually did. "I'm right?" he asked quietly, instead of doing any of that.

"It makes sense," Eliot said. "A sacrifice worthy of the soul we're trying to save. Sacrificing our old family for our new one."

So Eliot had realized it, too. "We don't have to do it," Quentin said, despite the sinking feeling in his gut that was telling him this was the only way. "It was a thought, but we don't have to."

"We do," Eliot said, and most of the anger had drained out of his voice. "You know we do."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I even thought of it, El, this is obviously killing you, and I - "

"We've already lost them," Eliot said. His voice had turned soothing, but he wasn't making any move to come closer to Quentin. "We lost them the second we walked through that clock. We're both smart enough to know that."

"It's different, to say it out loud," Quentin said. He made himself push off from the tree trunk and stand up straight. Eliot wouldn't meet his eyes. "I liked living in denial, El. I think I needed it."

For a long moment, Eliot didn't answer. He was staring down at his shoes, his spine ramrod straight but every line of his body conveying dejection.

"Q," he finally said, his voice small and wavering. Quentin stepped toward him, drawn like a magnet, cursing anything and everything in the world that could make Eliot sound like that. "Q, I'm - I'm never going to see Margo again."

Quentin was almost afraid that Eliot was going to flinch away from him, deny his touch. But he didn't - instead, when Quentin reached him and snaked an arm around his waist, Eliot fell forward into him, like he didn't know how to stand upright anymore. "I'm never going to - she's never going to know, Q." Eliot said, muffled into his neck. He wasn't crying, didn't even sound like he was on the verge of it anymore. His voice had gone dead and cold, like he really was just realizing this for the first time.

And in a way, maybe he was. Maybe they both were. Maybe their stories about home, telling Teddy about his Aunties, about the Earth adventures they'd all go on together, had been more than just idyll fantasy. They'd needed to believe that it might work. "Know what, honey?" he asked, brushing a hand through Eliot's hair.

"That I - " Eliot cut himself off, and then, surprising Quentin greatly, pressed his lips into Quentin's neck, a few short, swift kisses that crawled up the side of his jaw, and then one light peck against his lips. "That I'm finally happy."

Quentin's stomach swooped, his heart bleeding out of him. "Shit."

"Yeah, I know. She knew how - she knew better than anyone how fucked up I was, and I - I got  _ better _ , I'm like a moderately well-adjusted adult now. I'm a father and my kid doesn't hate me, and Margo - Margo deserves to see that her hard work actually fucking paid off. I can't fucking believe she's never going to know."

"I'm sorry," Quentin said. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not the only one, Q," Eliot said. "I know that. I know you're in the exact same position."

"It's bullshit," Quentin said, grasping on to a stirring of anger at the universe. Anger was always cleaner than despair, easier to handle. "It's bullshit that my dad's never going to meet his grandson. And that Jules - that all the people in my life who have spent so long worrying about me are never going to know that I fucking made it."

Eliot squeezed him tighter, burying his face back in to Quentin's hair. "I wish I could say some romantic nonsense right now about how none of it matters as long as we've got each other."

Quentin laughed, a pathetic, wet sound, against Eliot's shoulder. "If that were true, we wouldn't have bothered going after Arielle in the first place."

"Well, I mean, we're not fucking sociopaths. I'd like to think we'd try to help her out for Teddy's sake, even if we didn't love her," Eliot said.

"Stop trying to make me feel better," Quentin said, although he could feel the pull of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "I know it shouldn't feel like we're losing them all over again. It's - like you said, we're both smart enough to know we were probably never going home."

Eliot finally pulled back from Quentin, just far enough to meet his eyes. "And it's like  _ you  _ said. It's different to say it out loud."

"Yeah."

For an endless moment, they stood there in each other's arms, each lost in their own thoughts. Quentin thought of how good Julia would have been with Teddy. He imagined Alice, her brittle edges softening at the sight of Quentin at peace. He thought of Margo, running scared from the thought of an innocent and corruptible child, being coaxed by a laughing Eliot to come meet her little nephew. All things that would never happen. All things he'd never get to have. But he had this. This, right here, the press of Eliot, loving and devoted, against him. Maybe Eliot was right that they needed more than just each other - but that was the whole reason for this quest in the first place, wasn't it? They were stronger because of what they had. They would survive this, like everything else.

Finally, Quentin sighed, pulling with the greatest reluctance out of Eliot's arms. They looked at each other for a moment in grim silence, but there really wasn't anything more to say. With a nod of confirmation, they turned back as one to offer their sacrifice.

* * *

Quentin had half-expected something to go wrong. He had convinced himself that when they explained what they were sacrificing, that the owl might look at them, blink a few times, and then say "sorry, but it's blood sacrifices only, I'm afraid," and then it would all turn to chaos.

Instead, the owl looked at them both for a long, searching moment, her eyes flicking between Eliot and Quentin, who were both standing ramrod straight, close enough that their arms were pressed together. Quentin was prepared to run, prepared to attack, prepared to do whatever was necessary, but he wasn't prepared to walk away without one of those feathers.

And then... "A grave sacrifice, indeed," the owl said, her eyes closing for a moment. She shook one of her wings out, flicking it in a graceful motion, and a single feather detached itself, drifting down to the floor at the owl's feet.

"Thank you," Quentin breathed, taking a cautious step forward. Eliot made the beginning of a sound in the back of his throat, but didn't protest as Quentin approached, bending down to retrieve the feather.

"You should know," the owl said, as Quentin backed up until he was standing beside Eliot again, "That just because you have given up something precious, does not mean you should lose hope. Your friends would understand." And even though this owl didn't know their friends, couldn't possibly have any way of knowing how Alice would feel if she knew Quentin had made this choice, or what Margo's reaction would be, it still felt somehow comforting to hear.

Remembering the dryads, Quentin was still worried that they were going to be accosted as they exited the owl's clearing, expressing their thanks as they departed. But the forest was peaceful, the rustling in the branches nothing more than the normal sounds of busy life as the day elongated into afternoon. The owl feather was a darker, spotted brown, lying against the golden-brown of Arnold's feather in the jar. They had done it.

"That was almost anticlimactic," Quentin said, taking Eliot's hand when they were finally far enough away from the owl's clearing that he felt confident there wouldn't be any surprises.

Eliot let out a laugh, far from amused. "Almost." He was silent for several minutes, squeezing Quentin's hand tight. "So that's it, then. Even if we solve the mosaic..."

Quentin's stomach contracted again. "We're not going to solve it," he said.

"Then what the fuck are we doing?" Eliot snapped. "If we're not - "

"You agreed," Quentin said, tugging on Eliot's arm hard to get him to stop walking. He wanted to be looking at him for this conversation. "El, you agreed - "

The hardness in Eliot's eyes melted away and he lifted the hand not still gripped in Quentin's, brushing his fingers down the side of his cheek. "I know. I know, baby. We're okay. I just - haven't let myself think about it in concrete terms like that, and now it feels like we can't go back on it, like it's - like it's permanent. I don't really know how to handle that right now."

"If we - if we solve it, we can send the key through somehow. Help our friends."

"And then stay here," Eliot said, swallowing as he held eye-contact with Quentin. He turned to resume walking, and Quentin fell into step next to him. The walk to the phoenix's territory would take them a couple of days, so if nothing else, they had plenty of time to think about what they'd just agreed to. "If we can."

That may have been the scariest part of all of this - the idea that the key quest wouldn't let them stay in Fillory once they found the key. What if they were forced to go through? Forced back into old lives that didn't fit them anymore? Quentin knew it was a possibility, but also knew he'd fight against it if he had to. For so long he'd pretended he was fighting to go home, but now instead he knew he'd fight to  _ stay  _ home, in Fillory. And if the key quest did pull them back to their own time, would that invalidate the quest they were on now, given what they'd just promised? It didn't bear thinking about. Quentin remembered the owl's words - they had to have faith in themselves. In their devotion to their goal.

"Even if we solved it, I couldn't go back, El."

"Don't say 'I' like it's just you," Eliot said at once. He sounded pissed off, but Quentin knew him well enough to recognize the heartbreak in his voice. "I can't leave either. I wouldn't leave Teddy for anything, and I'd rather die than be separated from you."

Quentin was silent for many long moments. They'd spent so long, so much of their time, talking about their friends back home as a goal, an eventual destination. Even if they'd both stopped believing it years ago, it was strange to be saying things out loud that had always been understood but not spoken.

"If a door appeared in the woods right now, and Margo was on the other side of it..." Quentin started, because as much as this sucked, it suddenly felt important to see this through, to reach the logical conclusion.

"You know the answer," Eliot said. "I couldn't, not if it meant losing you or Teddy."

"I know," Quentin said, his voice wobbling. "I know that, but - she was your best friend - "

"You and Ari are my best friends," Eliot said. They weren't looking at each other, walking along the narrow wood-path at a brisk pace, their hands still tangled together. "Margo would understand."

"You know," Quentin said, nearly a whisper. "In my head, they're all - frozen, like if we were to go back to Earth they'd all be waiting for us exactly like they were when we left."

"How do you think they're doing? Without magic, without us?" Eliot said. This was another thing they never talked about. Everything about this conversation was painful.

"If they're doing even half as good as we are, then I'd say they all ended up pretty happy," Quentin said. "I hope Alice... I hope she's come to peace with some things."

"I hope Margo's kicking ass in Fillory."

"I hope Jules - "

"Yeah," Eliot said, when Quentin didn't finish. They both knew what they hoped. They both knew they could never know. It was what they had to live with, to fight for the family they'd made here.

"El," Quentin said, not sure what he wanted to say, not sure what he needed. Eliot stopped walking again, and spun into him, hands coming up to cradle his jaw as he bent his head for a soft, slow kiss.

"Q," he said, when he pulled back. "Q, I love you so much. I'm so fucking relieved you're here with me, I never could have - "

"Yeah," Quentin said, kissing him again, longer and less chaste. "Yeah, God, I - without you, I'd be - I don't even want to  _ think _ about - "

"No, let's not - let's just not think about it," Eliot said, choked up. "Just - just come here." There were still a few hours of daylight left. They should be walking, turning their attention to the phoenix, to the hearth-fire, to the end of their quest, which seemed closer than ever. But instead they stopped. They stopped long enough for Quentin to push Eliot up against a tree and drop to his knees, and then longer still for Eliot to press Quentin down into the forest floor and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until he was hard again, fuck him until they were both shouting, shameless and loud in the middle of the woods.

"God, this fucking quest," Eliot said afterwards, as they swiftly pulled their clothing back on, breathing harsh in the crisp autumn air. "It's driving me crazy."

"Me too," Quentin said. "I've never been more stressed out in my entire life and that's fucking saying something." Getting fucked by Eliot was generally an excellent way to  _ stop  _ feeling stress, and in a way it had worked - he felt loose and satisfied, the injection of endorphins adding a potent alteration to his particular cocktail of troubled emotions. But still, shit was fucked up, and he couldn't pretend otherwise, not to himself, and certainly not to Eliot.

Eliot, who had just yanked his shirt back on over his head, turned to stare at him, a hint of concern in his eyes. Quentin put a hand on his shoulder for balance as he tugged one of his shoes back on, then switched legs to pull on the other. "Q, I should have asked this a lot sooner. Are you okay?"

Quentin didn't need to ask what he meant - they both knew his depression tended to flare up whenever there was a significant change in routine, and there really couldn't be a change in routine more significant than leaving your son and going on a quest to save his mother, risking life and limb in the process. "I'm as okay as I can be," he hedged. "I don't really have time to not be okay, El." He ignored the worried twist of Eliot's eyebrows and started to march back down the path, still feeling the skin-tingles from Eliot's touch against his skin.

"That's not how mental illness works," Eliot said unnecessarily, hurrying to match Quentin's pace, and then adjusting to match Quentin's shorter strides.

"Oh, gee, thanks for letting me know."

"You're far too grumpy for someone who's just been given a spectacular orgasm."

Quentin snorted, but reached a hand out for Eliot to take. "Spectacular, huh?"

"Well, with all your carrying on, moaning and panting, and whatnot, I figured it must have been pretty special - "

"And you're far too smug for someone who just had  _ two _ spectacular orgasms in a row, courtesy of yours truly."

"I'm smug with good reason, I've got the most talented man in the world at my beck and call."

"Careful," Quentin said. "I hear the most talented man in the world is a fickle being, liable to rescind his affections at any moment."

"I've seen no evidence of that," Eliot said, and he squeezed Quentin's hand hard, bumping their shoulders together as they walked. "But seriously, Q - "

"But seriously, El," Quentin interrupted. He took a deep breath. "I miss my son. I miss Arielle. I miss my dad, I miss Julia, and Alice, and Margo, and even Penny, for fuck's sake. I miss New York and I miss Brakebills and I miss modern plumbing. And it's hard, and I'm not - you know -  _ great  _ right now, or whatever, but I'm okay. I've got you, and we're making progress and - that's enough for me to hold on to."

"Okay," Eliot said. His voice sounded small, like maybe he was trying to stop himself from crying. "I miss them too."

"You know what I miss?" Quentin said. "Italian food."

"Decent alcohol," Eliot chipped in immediately.

"Cars. Paved roads."

"Cellphones."

"The internet," they both said together, and laughed.

"Shampoo, the good stuff, anti-frizz for my hair," Eliot said.

"Libraries."

"Oh, you beautiful little nerd."

"Cheesecake," Quentin put in thoughtfully. "Do you think we could make cheesecake here?"

"Not cheesecake I'd be willing to try," Eliot said. "But if you want to poison yourself, I won't stop you."

They kept walking past dusk, occasionally consulting their map, and indulged in memories of the luxuries and necessities from a world they both knew they'd never see again, until their conversation grew lethargic and their pace slowed down. And then they stopped to sleep.

* * *

**ELIOT**

For the next day or so, Quentin was in a nearly buoyant mood. He kept repeating their accomplishments to date, remarking again and again that only the phoenix feather and the hearth-fire remained, and on the other side of that was Arielle, and a return home to Teddy.

And Eliot wanted to join him there - he understood the allure of optimism, and had employed just this tactic several times along their quest thus far. But every time he tried to convince himself into enthusiasm, he'd think of Margo. He'd think of Fen. He couldn't remember their faces with any level of exactness anymore, except when he wasn't trying. They'd come to him in flashes - Fen's sweet smile, the innocence of her devotion transforming into the stalwart truth of real companionship and affection. And Margo - his perfect woman, his soulmate before he'd even met Quentin. Without ever discussing it, he and Margo had known that they'd spend their lives together, in whatever shape that happened to take. And now he was spending a life with someone else. Someone he loved more than the breath in his lungs, more than the finest champagne he'd ever tasted, more than every luxury hair product and designer label in all the world.

And he felt guilty about it. His conversation with Quentin the day before, where they spoke aloud their hopes for their friends, had brought reality back to him with a stunning amount of force. Over the years, he and Quentin had talked about their distant homes frequently. But whenever they did, they were either reminiscing about the past, or planning for an impossible future where they'd reunite at last. What they  _ didn't _ discuss was the present. Even if they could magically transport themselves home right this second, what would that mean? Would the same amount of time have passed in their own time? If so, what had Margo been doing for the past nine years?

Was anyone still looking for them? Had their friends mourned for them? Had there been a funeral? Had they somehow succeeded in bringing magic back without the keys, or were they still toiling in a world without the source of power that gave them all their comfort and purpose? Was Margo taking care of Fillory? Had Fen and Fray found a family in one another? And the others - was Alice reconciled to her new life? Would Julia really ever give up on looking for Quentin? And if their friends could see them now, would they be happy for them in their found happiness and peace, or resentful that they'd settled down and had stopped dedicating every second of their lives to the task of returning home?

"You know, if we keep this pace, we should be able to shave a half-day off of the journey to the phoenix," Quentin said, buoyant with purpose. "I've always wanted to see a phoenix, you know. Owls and eagles are cool, but like - we have those on earth, even if they're not like twelve feet tall and um - communicative in the same way. But a phoenix - I wonder which parts of the lore are true in Fillory? Plover never wrote about a phoenix in any of the books, so this is actually new territory for me. I don't know, is it weird that I feel like I'm getting like - deleted scenes or never-before-seen chapters of my favorite books? Sometimes I can forget that we're like - in Fillory, you know, but then it'll hit me all over again and it's like - God, if I could go back and tell sixteen-year-old Quentin about this..."

Eliot loved him so fucking much. He loved his nerdy babbling and the way that despite his depression he could find a way to get excited about anything. And he wanted to be able to smile and make fun of him for his Fillory obsession, but just the thought made him think of Margo again, of what Margo would say if she knew that he and Quentin were together, a proper couple, parenting a child, happy and domestic and monogamous. She'd give him such a hard time, but she'd see how happy he was, and she'd be happy for him, and she'd totally be his Best Woman at the wedding, and she'd pretend to be disinterested in Teddy at first but then totally fall in love with him too, and -

"El?"

"Hmm?"

"You're not listening to a word I'm saying, are you?" Quentin said, half-amused, half-concerned.

"I - maybe not so much. Sorry."

"Are you okay?"

"No," Eliot said, the honest truth slipping out automatically. "Apparently the optimism torch is firmly in your hands at the moment. Which is - good, I'm glad you're - I'm just... I don't know."

"Uncharacteristically lacking in eloquence," Quentin observed, nudging Eliot's arm with his own. He reached down to tangle their fingers together, and the touch was instantly soothing. "Thinking about home?"

"Thinking about - our old home. Yeah. Margo."

Quentin squeezed his hand for a moment. "Do you need me to shut up for a while?"

Eliot laughed. "No. I need you to keep rambling on about your nerdy bullshit, please."

This time, the squeeze of Quentin's fingers around his hand was hard enough to be punishment. "Well when you ask so nicely, how can I refuse?"

To get to the phoenix, they had to walk a few more days through the same woods, and then cross countryside for a couple of days. For the rest of that day, Eliot let himself wallow in what he was missing at the same time he celebrated what he had. Quentin carried on an almost entirely one-sided conversation about Fillorian lore, and how the books and the reality as he'd experienced it compared. By the time they'd started to approach the edge of the treeline, late two days later, the optimism torch had switched hands a few times, shared in some instances, or carried alone by just one of them in others.

They had to be slightly careful for the next part of their journey. There was a spot on Bella's map marked with a black "X," and a notation elsewhere in the journal that warned of poisonous flowers, a fatal illness waiting for any who found themselves exposed to its pollen.

Eliot wasn't actually particularly concerned about this notation - there had been others along the way, notes of potential dangers on their journeys between each of the ingredients. They had managed to find different routes for most of them, and when that wasn't possible, simply proceeded with caution. There had been one warning in the notebook of a nest of deadly vipers when they'd been on their way to the dryads, and no real way to avoid the general area without adding a week to their travel time. They'd decided to risk it, and had found the abandoned remains of what might once have been home to "serpents of unusual size," as Quentin had decided to call them. The journal, for all that it had been a lifesaver in pointing them in the right direction, was also out of date.

"I think it's just a field, though," Quentin said, looking at the map. "Assuming this is to scale, there's really no disadvantage for giving the flowers a wide berth. We can cut around the north aside and lose practically no time at all."

The light around them was getting brighter as they approached a break in the treeline. They'd been traveling practically non-stop through forest since they had started this quest, but today's travel was taking them across open farmland and prairies, a brief but welcome respite before they dove back in to the cover of thickset flora. "So we just avoid the poppies, and the Wicked Witch can't send us into an eternal slumber," Eliot said, nodding sagely.

"So you've read those books, and not  _ Fillory and Further _ ?" Quentin said, rolling his eyes.

"I've seen the film," Eliot said. "One must do one's part as a Friend of Dorothy."

Quentin did that precious, adorable thing he sometimes did where he bit back hard on a smile so as not to reward Eliot too easily for his witticisms. Eliot lived for Quentin's smiles, and loved that he had to work to earn them. "El," Quentin said. "Please take this at least a little bit seriously."

"I'm taking it a lot a bit seriously," Eliot quipped back. At Quentin's unimpressed eyebrow raise, he continued. "No  _ seriously _ . I'm not much inclined to end up looking like that guy." He gestured vaguely at Bella's notebook. Quentin had it open to a page describing the effects of the flowers' poisonous pollen, complete with a sketch of one of the victims. Bella was quite the artist, and she'd rendered the man's diseased flesh and grimace of pain in disturbingly life-like fashion. There were black lines webbing along the skin of the figure's chest, expanding out from his heart to tangle along his arms and down to his stomach, even up onto his neck. According to the journal's account, the black veins of poison started appearing quickly and carried away the infected person within days.

"So then there's to be no stopping to smell the flowers," Quentin said. "Just another goddamn detour instead."

"Hey, you said it would add barely any time," Eliot reminded him. "Stay positive."

Within an hour, they were well and truly out of the forest. It was an unexpected boon to be walking beneath a clear blue sky, with just the right amount of crisp autumn coolness in the air. The Violet Woodlands had been more or less comfortable over the past couple of weeks, and they'd certainly made a lot of progress on their quest. They had the water, they had the earth, they had two of the three feathers. But a change of scenery was a relief Eliot hadn't even known he was looking for. Those woods had brought success, but they'd also brought a couple of near-misses that Eliot was all too grateful to put behind him for a small hiatus.

After the day's journey across open fields, they'd be right back into the shallows of the woods to confront the phoenix, and then further in to find the fire. It was in times like these that it almost felt like they were going to make it.

"Look," Quentin said, nudging Eliot to get his attention. "People."

And indeed, there was a cart wending its way down the country road they were following, with two horses clomping along slowly. There were two women walking beside the horses instead of up in the cart, guiding the animals at a sedate pace. From a distance, it was hard to see why this would be - if they had a cart, and had two horses, why would they be walking? Eliot glanced over at Quentin and raised an eyebrow. Quentin shrugged in answer to his silent question. "Maybe they're talking horses and they asked for a break or something."

"Should we... go say hi?"

It had been a while since they'd talked to another human being, although there had been enough conversation with esoteric talking birds to last Eliot a lifetime.

"It feels like popping the bubble or something," Quentin said, but he didn't sound unhappy at the idea. He glanced back down at the map, consulting their route, then up at the sky, judging the time of day. Eliot's smiled at the sight. Quentin really was a natural little quester. "Yeah," Quentin said, finally, nodding in decision. "Let's go say hi."


	15. Chapter Fifteen - In Which There is a Brief Respite From the Forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, I feel like I should apologize for this one. Thanks as always for all of your continued support!

**ELIOT**

The horses, it transpired, were not of the talking variety, but were still very friendly. The women walking beside the horses were friendly enough as well, although neither of them were much in the mood for making new friends. Miss Calliope Harper and her sister-in-law Mrs. Delilah Harper were young, attractive, healthy young women, ones Eliot wished he could have met under better circumstances. They had approached them walking in the opposite direction, back the way Eliot and Quentin had come, and before long Calliope was offering to break bread with them.

"I would offer you a seat in the wagon but my brother..." Calliope had explained after introductions had been made. "He's... resting in the back. We decided to walk the horses for a while so as to avoid jostling him."

Delilah let out a little squeak of distress at this. "Resting. Can't we talk about it as it is?"

Quentin, who had been petting one of the horses, looked sharply over his shoulder at Delilah, whose placid face had gone pinched with anger at her sister-in-law's words.

"Lilah," Calliope said, her voice low. "We mustn't burden our new acquaintances..."

"If there's anything we can do to help, please tell us," Quentin said at once, because he was Quentin Coldwater and of course he did. It was probably Eliot's job to remind Quentin that they had a quest to complete, and couldn't stop to help the nice pretty ladies they happened to stumble upon on the way. But honestly, Eliot was happy for the chance to talk to other humans, and something about the pallid and drained expressions on both Delilah and Calliope's faces made him want to help them in whatever way he could. As the cynic between himself and Quentin, however, he hadn't ruled out the possibility that they were about to be swindled. When Quentin came back over from saying hello to the horses, Eliot put a surreptitious hand against Quentin's lower back, asking him silently to keep close.

"There's nothing," Delilah said, her nose in the air. "There's nothing left to do but wait."

"You don't know that for certain," Calliope said, her eyes widening as she glanced from Delilah, over to Quentin and Eliot. "My brother - "

"My husband," Delilah interrupted. "Is dying. Right now. In horrible pain, in the back of this very cart."

Eliot shot a glance at Quentin, then looked at the wagon. From this angle, he couldn't see Mr. Harper, who was apparently resting in the back.

"Um," Quentin said, shuffling just the tiniest bit closer to Eliot. He could read Quentin's mind easily enough - what was the polite way to express sorrow and also ask if the man in question was dying of something contagious?

"Delilah, really, do you have to be so - so - "

"What? Practical? At least I'm not stuck in a daydream where if we just get him home he'll suddenly come to and magically heal himself - "

"I never said that. I said maybe seeing mom and dad would grant him strength - "

"You can be so terribly naive."

"And you can be so terribly callous."

"Um," Quentin interjected, snaking an arm around Eliot's waist, unconsciously seeking support. "I mean it, if there's anything at all we can do to help..."

"There really isn't," Calliope said, less dismissive than Delilah had been. She sighed and looked away from the stormy expression on her sister-in-law's face. "My brother... the fate that has befallen him need not be suffered by others. If you're going this way, along the path, please be careful."

"Was he attacked?" Quentin asked, frowning. "Look, I can't make any promises, but maybe there's something we could do, some healing - "

Eliot pinched the skin at his hipbone to warn him to stop talking. He wasn't sure they should be advertising their magical capabilities to just anyone they happened to stumble upon.

"He wasn't attacked," Calliope continued, reaching behind her to pat absently at one of the horses. "Well... I suppose in a manner of speaking he was, but the evil that has befallen him cannot be defeated by any conventional method." . She looked so desperately sad that Eliot had the urge to wrap an arm around her in comfort. Quentin separated himself from Eliot and moved forward, and she didn't stop him from taking a few steps past her and towards the back of the wagon. Delilah turned to watch Quentin go, the lines on her forehead deepening, but she didn't say anything either.

Eliot followed, of course. "Careful, Q, we don't know what's back there," he said, leaning down to mutter the words in Quentin's ear so the women couldn't hear.

"Your lack of trust in basic human decency is not charming," Quentin said, but he did let Eliot stay close behind him as he stepped behind the wagon and looked in through the tent flaps.

"As I believe we've previously discussed, I'm  _ always _ charming - oh shit."

It didn't take longer than a single glance for Eliot to realize what had happened to the poor man resting in the back of this wagon. He appeared to be sleeping, but not peacefully - Eliot had never seen a person more obviously in pain, and he was moving, his head rolling backwards and forwards against the thin folded up blanket he was using as a pillow.

"Oh my God," Quentin said, and he took a hasty step backwards, backing straight into Eliot, who was ready as always to catch him.

What Eliot had taken at first to be strands of the man's dark hair, plastered against his face, he now realized were veins, black and diseased by their very appearance, creeping up along the man's jaw and the edges of his temples. He was covered in a blanket for the most part, but one of his arms had flailed outside of the covers, and Eliot could see the same dark lines marring the skin there as well. Bella's drawing hadn't done justice to the sickly tone of the skin, the sheen of sweat, the limp, tired set to the limbs, exhaustion apparent even in slumber.

"It happened very quickly," a voice said from behind them. Eliot turned, eager for the excuse to look away from the miserable man in the cart. Quentin didn't look away. The line of his body was frozen with shock, pressed against Eliot's own. Delilah's expression was hard, her voice sharp and almost matter-of-fact. "Just yesterday morning, we passed through a field. Calliope and I were up in the cart. Johann..." she trailed off, swallowing. Eliot slid his hand down Quentin's arm to tangle their fingers together, and watched as Delilah tracked the movement. "Johann wanted to stretch his legs."

"This happened in less than two days?" Quentin asked, finally turning his eyes away from Johann. "He's - he was healthy yesterday?"

"We had heard rumors of danger in the area," Delilah said. "But we thought - it was just a trip to visit my family." There was something new in her voice now, almost a note of pleading, as if she sought absolution from these two strangers. Someone to tell her that it wasn't her fault that her husband was currently on the brink of death.

Eliot looked down at Quentin, to find him looking back. What could they say? What could they possibly -

"And you've tried..." Quentin began, clearing his throat and squeezing Eliot's hand hard. "Is there nothing that can be done for him?"

"We rushed him straight to the healing river," Calliope said. She'd come around to the back of the wagon as well. She stared sadly at the shape of her brother inside the wagon, and placed a hand gently against Delilah's arm. Eliot half expected Delilah to jerk away from the touch, but she didn't. They were united in their grief, even if it manifested differently for each of them. "Johann has never been one for magical solutions like that, but we figured it was better than nothing. We were forced to pay heavily, but the guardian of that river warned us that it wouldn't work, and - he was right."

"I'm so sorry," Eliot said. "We've heard something about this poison. We've been told there's nothing to do once you're infected."

The women nodded their heads sadly, each of them looking over Quentin and Eliot's shoulders towards the wagon. Eliot's throat was tight. He wanted very badly to move on, to continue on their way and try to put the sight of this pathetic, heartbroken little family out of his mind. But he couldn't do that - Quentin's compassion wouldn't allow for it, for one thing - and as callous as it made Eliot feel, these women had valuable information for them. If they could point out where the field of flowers was, then they needed to stay and ask some questions. It was worth being insensitive if it could help them avoid a similar fate.

"Where exactly..." Quentin said, surprising Eliot by initiating the question. "Where exactly did this happen?"

By common consent, Calliope guided Eliot and Quentin back towards the horses at the front of the cart, leaving Delilah to climb back in and tend to her husband. Calliope filled them in on the rest of the story - once they had determined that the healing river wouldn't work, they had decided to turn around and head home, back towards Calliope and Johann's family farm. He was coherent enough to express a wish to be buried at home with his ancestors, and while at first they'd thought to hurry, to get him home in time to say farewell to his parents and other family members, before long it was clear that Johann wouldn't be making it that far.

Eliot admired Calliope's steadfastness, the way she was able to show her grief without shame, but also keep a level head as she told her story. She also examined the map that they had been using, and marked off the area where he brother had most likely been infected.

"It came on very quickly. Within minutes he was feeling poorly," Calliope said. "But it's not a large field, like you have marked here on your map. It was only a few flowers. They are brightly colored, but shorter than the grass around them. It makes it difficult to see them, scattered about in small groups as they are."

After they had determined a likely radius for Johann's fatal poisoning, and determined a path that would take them well outside of the range, the new acquaintances said their goodbyes. The two women wished Eliot and Quentin luck as they made to set off again, and Quentin awkwardly offered condolences for a loss that the Harpers had resigned themselves to, even if technically Johann was still alive.

"I hope he slips away sooner rather than later," Eliot said, as the two of them resumed their path down the road, the sound of the Harper's wagon fading away as they headed in the opposite direction. "I mean, given the inevitable."

Quentin reached for his hand and squeezed it. "He looked..." Quentin started, his lips pinched and his hand cold in Eliot's.

"I know," Eliot said. He almost wanted to ask Quentin to shut up and not talk about it, despite the fact that he'd invited the conversation. They'd been so cavalier about the quest's many "side challenges," as Quentin had taken to calling them. There had been plenty of other aspects of their mission to worry about. Why stress over a passing reference to large vipers when the solution to that puzzle was either "kill" or "avoid"? Why bother ruminating on the possible effects of eating the wrong type of berry in a particular tree grove, when you could magic yourself food and steer clear of anything suspicious? They hadn't had to confront any of the dangers of Fillory's natural world, except for the parts directly connected to the quest.

Johann had been... eye-opening.

"I feel so bad for them," Quentin said. "God, it feels stupid just saying that. I can't even fucking imagine."

Eliot could. Eliot could imagine it all too well. Not himself getting sick, exactly, but Quentin. Or Arielle, or - no. He wasn't even going to think Teddy's name in this situation. No point in conjuring such an image in his mind, if he could avoid it. Johann's eyes had been moving beneath his eyelids, clearly dreaming, a haunted expression somehow suffusing every inch of his face. He'd just radiated pain, and defeat, and death. And nobody there, not his sister, not his wife, not brave and determined and generous Quentin, had believed for one second that there was anything left to do for him.

Eliot stared ahead, at the smudge of darkness miles away, where they would once again slip back into the familiar forest to continue their path to the phoenix's home. He almost wished they'd never had to leave the trees at all, despite how excited he'd been for a change of scenery just that morning. If they'd stayed in the woods, they wouldn't have met the Harpers, wouldn't have known the actual reality of Bella's sketch in breathtakingly immediate form. He really did hope the poor bastard died quickly, for his own sake as well as his sister and wife.

The dirt path they had been traveling on started to go thin as it wound its way through open prairie. Eliot, his eyes still on the trees ahead, didn't notice at first that Quentin had fallen a few paces behind. He turned back, to see that Quentin had slowed his pace and was sweeping the ground with his eyes.

"Q, Johann was infected like a day's travel from here," he said.

"I know," Quentin said, but he didn't lift his head from the ground, just sped up to take Eliot's outstretched hand without looking. "But they said small clusters of flowers, instead of a big field. Who knows how widespread the clusters could be?"

With that cheerful thought, they spent the rest of the day in contemplative silence, scanning the grasses they were walking through with paranoid twitches at anything that broke the monotony of blues and greens and yellows. They spent an uncomfortable sleepless night under the stars, and Eliot remembered wistfully how much he'd been looking forward to staring up at the cloudless night sky with Quentin, relaxing into slumber without the closeness of trees pressing in. Fillory's sky was a thing of beauty, but it was hard to appreciate when he was half convinced there were tiny evil flowers nestled somewhere in the grass nearby, ready to kill them both.

They had started out early the next morning, wanting to hurry past this part of their journey as quickly as possible, by unspoken consent. The line of the forest ahead of them was getting closer and closer, and they were getting nearer and nearer to the known location of at least some of the purported deadly flowers.

At some point in mid-morning, Eliot had reached his breaking point with all the tense worrying. Still keeping his eyes on the ground, scanning the area in front of him, he took Quentin's hand in his and tangled their fingers together. "What do you think Teddy's up to right now?"

It was a risk, but a calculated one. He wanted to get Quentin's mind off of the poor Harper family and the dangers facing them, but sometimes talking about Teddy was more painful than it was helpful.

"Probably making his grandmother tear her hair out," Quentin said, looking up at Eliot with a grin. The tight ball of worry in Eliot's chest loosened slightly at the sight. "Fuck, El, I miss him."

"Me too. I miss - " he hesitated, then huffed out a laugh and continued. "I miss the  _ mosaic _ ."

Quentin snorted. "Bet you never thought you'd say that."

"Well, no, but the thing is, the mosaic never tried to kill me. Or, more importantly, you."

Quentin lifted his face from his perusal of the grass to look at Eliot, rolling his eyes. "It might kill us one day from boredom, or sheer frustration."

"I would relish a bit of boredom right now. I kind of can't believe we're about to go talk to another giant fucking bird."

"This one's magic," Quentin said, a bright spark of interest in his eyes. "That's a change of pace, at least."

"I love that you think a giant talking eagle isn't magic."

"It's relative," Quentin said. "Do you think Teddy would like the phoenix better than Arnold? I mean, maybe the colors and the reincarnation would appeal."

"Still a big bird, Q. Pretty sure he'd be equally terrified."

"What do you think that's about, anyway? The bird fear thing?" Quentin mused. His eyes were back on the grass, scanning for color, and Eliot forced his eyes away from his partner to do his own part, keeping his pace steady, his perusal methodical. The fields they were walking through were covered in some truly beautiful grass, shades from straw-yellow to the deepest purple combining to create an overall effect of blue-ish green. It didn't look all that different from grass he had seen on Earth, but it shimmered with the general atmosphere of magic that imbued every inch of Fillory. The line of the forest was very close now, and Eliot could practically feel the coolness of the familiar shade against his skin. He was eager for it, after the stress of the last two days.

"He's snack-sized," Eliot said, and Quentin smacked him on the arm without even looking up. "What? I'm just saying, Teddy's the size of a tater-tot, relative to Arnold. His fear is perfectly rational."

"Mmm, tater-tots."

"With barbecue sauce," Eliot reminisced.

"Ew. With ranch."

"Um -  _ you're  _ saying ew? Seriously, ranch?"

"El."

"Nuh-uh, how have we never talked about this? You like ranch? Gross. Why did I fall in love with you?"

"No, El - " Quentin said, grabbing his wrist hard, jerking him to a halt. "Is that - red. I see red."

Eliot's heart shot into his throat. He turned to look at Q and then followed the line of his gaze. Ahead, barely visible in the mix of the tall grass, was a flash of bright red. They were maybe twenty feet away from it.

"Okay," he said, attempting calm. "Okay, no problem, let's just - very carefully - come this way." He turned his hand over so he could hold Quentin's, tugging him away from the flowers. He scanned the ground ahead of him, cursing himself for getting distracted. "Okay - nope. There's more over there." These ones were farther away, but visible now that he knew the shade of red to look for.

"Back up," Quentin said. "We'll go back a couple hundred yards and then make a circuit." He turned around, and Eliot turned with him. "Wait - what - how?"

Eliot didn't need to ask Quentin what he meant. Behind them, several yards back, was another small cluster of the flowers. They had just walked that way, and Eliot was sure he would have noticed if they'd been walking directly over them. But now, it was like his eyes were playing tricks on him. Everywhere he looked, his eyes skittered from one cluster of the red flowers to another. It was like they were... unfolding, blooming up from nothingness, the tall stalks of grass fading, shrinking, replaced everywhere with red. Red, red, red, and then the blackness of those veins, on poor Johann's body, the quickness of death --

"Oh, shit," Eliot said, blinking against the horror of it, turning in a circle. The view didn't change when he opened his eyes again. This was real. They were surrounded. They were - "Oh  _ shit _ ," he repeated. " _ Run _ ."

He tugged at Quentin's arm and yanked him forward as fast as he could, his eyes now firmly fixed on the treeline of the forest, maybe half a mile away. He couldn't stop seeing the splashes of red, though, unfurling around them like they'd been waiting for prey. They were beautiful flowers - perfectly proportioned, wide nearly rose-like petals, bright with sinister health, and just breathing the air around them could be killing them both. Quentin, thank God, had realized what was happening right along with Eliot, and with a curse of his own, he took off full-tilt, his hand grappling for purchase in Eliot's shirtfront to tug him along. They ran as fast as they could through the patch of flowers, breath heaving and hearts pounding.

Eliot had visions in his head of his own skin cracking and lined with black webbing, and infinitely more horrifying, watching the same thing happen to Quentin. He felt the bite of Quentin's fingernails against the skin of his arm as they both ran, Q refusing to let go of him even though they might have been quicker if they were running separately.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck - " Quentin muttered under his breath, and Eliot wanted to tell him to save his breath and keep running. His brain was whirling with ideas for protective spells, bubbles of clean air, but it was too late - they should have done it sooner, they should have done it the second they left the Harpers, he was so  _ stupid _ and now they were going to die -

Their many years in Fillory, the constant manual labor, and long journeys for even the most basic supplies, had shaped Quentin and Eliot both into reasonably athletic people. But they were both heaving for breath by the time the flowers vanished and the grass started to give way to patchy areas of dirt. The treeline was one hundred yards away, and even as the patches of red seemed to be behind them, neither slowed down until they reached the cooler air near the cover of thick branches.

Quentin staggered to a halt, dropping Eliot's arm to lean over and rest against his own knees. "Fuck. I mean. Shit.  _ Eliot _ ." He lunged forward and grabbed Eliot's face between his hands, his eyes scanning every millimeter, ostensibly looking for signs of imminent doom. Eliot tugged him forward, running a hand under his shirt to feel the smooth unblemished skin beneath. What if - what if -

"They said it happened within minutes," Quentin said, eyes wide. "Are you - do you feel - "

Eliot shook his head, breath hitching in his chest. He slid his hands out of Quentin's shirt, then took Quentin's face between his own hands, mirroring, his eyes darting everywhere, half convinced that the lines of death were going to start sprouting along his smooth skin. "Oh fuck  _ no _ , Q, this can't happen, I can't let - "

"Just - just wait, maybe we - I don't know, maybe we won't be - maybe - I mean, we’re not Fillorian, so maybe - " Quentin sounded completely unconvincing in his attempt at reassurance, and Eliot almost couldn't stand to look at him. He tugged him forward into a hug, burying his face in Quentin's neck. They stood there, gripping each other tight, and Eliot forced himself to breathe deep and slow, bringing Quentin into it until they had both regulated their heart-rates. Eliot counted out a minute. Two. Three.

Four.

Five.

And then, he pulled away from Quentin with the greatest reluctance, terror clawing its way along every inch of his skin. He scanned Quentin's face, his arms, brushing his hands across his collarbone, slipping down to take his hands, gripping them both tight and bringing them up to his chest. "Do you feel anything?"

"No. I don't think so," Quentin said. "I feel normal." Eliot's shoulders folded inward, the relief bowling him over.

"Are you sure?" His knees were wobbling; he felt almost as relieved as he had when he'd seen Quentin clutched alive in Arnold's talons.

"Yeah, I mean - I'm freaking the fuck out, but physically I don't feel - I mean - no weird black veins, no symptoms - El, do you feel - "

"No," Eliot said immediately, and then paused for a moment to make sure this was true. His throat felt tight, his hands were shaking, but he was pretty confident that this was only the adrenaline. "No. I'm good.  _ God _ . God, you're okay." He could hardly believe it. "We're okay, we - "

"Yeah," Quentin said, surging forward and pulling Eliot down into a clumsy, breathless kiss, off-center and urgent. "Oh, fuck. That was - way too close, I thought - "

"You know," Eliot said, humming at the pressure of Quentin's lips as he adjusted his aim and licked his way at once into Eliot's mouth. His words came out muffled, since Quentin wouldn't stop kissing him. "Sometimes I really hate Fillory."

Quentin laughed, a choked and half-hysterical sound. "Eliot, Jesus, are you sure you - "

"I don't feel anything, I swear," Eliot said, bunching his hands up in Quentin's shirt, brushing his back with his knuckles. "I think we're okay. I think we're  _ okay _ , baby."

The cover of the treeline was close by, but they were still mostly out in the open. It probably wasn't appropriate to make out ferociously out in broad daylight like this, but Eliot really could not have cared less. He got a hand up under Quentin's shirt and curled it around his rib-cage, relishing in every expanding and contracting, every thrum of healthy, vital blood against his palm. There was still fear coursing through his own veins at the near-miss, of course. They didn't know how magical poisonous flowers worked, after all. What if it didn't hit them the same way it had Johann? What if they got sick later, what if they didn't even know about it until - but he pressed forward into Quentin, tangling his hands in the strands of his partner's hair, deepening the kiss and letting the sensation of joyous togetherness drown out every possible what-if. They were okay. They had to be okay.

"Would it be totally inappropriate for me to ask you to fuck me right now?" Quentin gasped against his mouth. "I think my biological fight-or-flight response is transforming into acute horniness." He rolled his hips forward into Eliot's, and Eliot moaned in a combination of desire and disbelief.

"You are such a weird nerd," Eliot said, biting along Quentin's jaw, tugging him up and closer so he could get to his favorite spot just against the pulse point on his neck. "I am disturbed by how sexy I find you."

"Is that a yes?"

"Emphatically, darling. As always."

They did manage to make their way in to the treeline, away from the bright afternoon sunlight and any potentially prying eyes out in the open, but only barely. Eliot had Quentin pinned up against a tree within moments, a leg slotted between Quentin's, hands fisted in his hair.

"Now," Quentin said, slurred against his lips, "God, El,  _ now _ , I need - "

Quentin's urgency actually calmed Eliot down, just enough that he could slow their pace, cup Quentin's face between his palms and spend a minute just kissing him, as deep and thorough as he could, trying to pour every ounce of himself into it. Quentin's entire body melted back against the tree, his hands gripped against Eliot's waist. It was the most empowering feeling in the world, this ability to kiss Quentin into the exact mood Eliot wanted, to guide and shift the energy to suit them both, to bring them each satisfaction. Quentin's hands had crept up under Eliot's shirt at some point without him really noticing, and he was running his thumbs over and over again along Eliot's hipbones. That, combined with the repeated slide of their lips against each other, the feel of Quentin's hair sliding against the pads of his fingertips, created a nearly trance-like state, a high that Eliot wanted to sink into forever.

"El," Quentin breathed in the millimeters between their lips. "You feel so good." Quentin gripped his hips harder, shifting him in closer so they were aligned. Eliot could feel the hot, heavy length of Quentin's cock against his own, and allowed a breathy moan to escape his lips, pressing forward into the cradle of Quentin's hips. The trance was breaking, the reality of Quentin's perfect body pressing against his own was coming to the forefront of his mind, some animal instinct making itself known inside of Eliot's head.

"I want to be in you," Eliot said, startled at the urgency he suddenly felt. It was like they'd traded places - Quentin's hands were gentle and even, his breathing serene even as he twitched his hips forward into Eliot's. But Eliot - his hands were shaking against the side of Quentin's face, his heart beating nearly hard enough to hurt. "Please, Q, I want - "

"Yes," Quentin said, connecting their lips again. " _ Yes _ ," he repeated, his head thrown back against the tree as Eliot ducked his head, sucking at Quentin's neck. His hands crept lower, tugging at the front of Quentin's trousers until he could sip a hand inside, gripping his cock, sliding his fingers around to roll his balls in between them, then back up, setting a steady rhythm. He smiled against Quentin's neck, increasing the suction of his lips, as Quentin made a punched out sound and pushed his hips forward into Eliot's hand. "Fucking  _ fuck _ , Eliot, how do you do this to me every fucking time - "

Eliot wanted to reply, but the words got lost somewhere in the press of hands and lips and tongues. He let himself drown in the sounds he was wringing from Quentin, lovely, low, agonizing moans, panted directly into the skin of Eliot's collarbone, just above the line of his shirt. He slowed the movement of his hands before Quentin got too worked up, forcing his trembling body to take a step back, separating them for a moment. As he had predicted, Quentin blinked up at him with a bereft whimper, moving forward like a magnet to reconnect them.

Quentin's pupils were blown wide, his mouth red and wet and swollen. He looked like something out of the filthiest of Eliot's daydreams; it almost made him want to laugh, the absurdity of his love overwhelming him. "Come back here," Quentin said, tugging on his arm, his voice low and husky with want.

"I - we need to go further in - we're right on the path - " Eliot said, his very rational argument against continuing  _ right here right now _ getting lost somewhere in the look in Quentin's eyes. Q stepped forward, rubbed his groin up against Eliot's, then snaked a hand down and grabbed Eliot's cock through the fabric of his pants, giving it a tight squeeze.

"I want this inside of me in the next five minutes. I'm not fucking around."

"Shit," Eliot said. "Shit. Okay." He stumbled forward and pressed Quentin back against the tree, grinding against him and kissing him again, ferocious and hot and - his brain had pretty much shut down, everything in him operating on a closed circuit of lust, but some of the desperation of their narrow escape was still thrumming in his veins, heightening the tension and the wonder all together. Quentin was laughing at him even as he allowed himself to be manhandled back against the tree - he gave as good as he got, nipping at Eliot's lips and moving his teeth and tongue down to his jawline as Eliot finally tore his mouth away, tugging Quentin's pants down more fully so they would pool at his ankles.

"Do you want - " Eliot tried to ask, and then cut himself off with a groan as Quentin's hands grabbed at his ass, pulling them flush with one another again. He was so hard he could practically feel the blood pounding in his cock. He wanted to be naked. He wanted Quentin naked. He wanted to be inside of him  _ god damnit _ , it was almost too much - "Here, like this, or lying down?" he finally managed to ask, trying to regulate his breath as Quentin jerked their hips together, a ceaseless grind that had him closing his eyes against the intensity of the sensation.

"Can you even hold me up right now?" Quentin asked. In the part of Eliot's brain that wasn't hazy and incoherent with lust, he wondered if he should make a quip or be insulted, but honestly who the fuck had time for that?

"Undecided," he managed to grit out, and without another word Quentin slid to his knees, rubbing his body down Eliot's as he went. "Fuck."

Quentin's mouth was - Quentin's  _ mouth _ , oh  _ Jesus  _ \- "Q, if you don't want me to - Q, baby, too close, I'm - " Quentin pulled away from him with an obscene moan, then reached out for his hands and tugged him downwards, until Eliot crashed to the dirt beside him. In one continuous motion that Eliot was having trouble tracking, he found his pants had been removed entirely, and Quentin was lying back and bringing Eliot with him, until he found his straining cock pressed against Quentin's own, his frame blanketing and bracketing Quentin's smaller one against the ground.

They really were indecently close to the edge of the treeline, mere feet away from a broad path that anyone might wander down, but somehow that was part of it, heightening the urgency and intensity of every touch, every twitch, every sound falling from Quentin's mouth. Quentin was too impatient for Eliot to prep him with his fingers - too impatient, in fact, to wait for Eliot to get his head in the game and do the spell himself. He twisted his fingers around and the second he was done, he grabbed Eliot's hand in his and guided it down so that Eliot could determine for himself that Quentin was really ready for him.

"You're going to kill me," Eliot said, hooking two fingers inside of Quentin and jabbing against his prostate. "You're going to  _ kill  _ me, Q." He just looked so damn pretty all the time, it was almost infuriating - his mouth wet and open and gasping, his eyes fluttering shut against the intrusion into his body. His skin had gone patchy as the heat colored everything a beautiful pink. Eliot crooked his fingers and Quentin's entire body shuddered.

"Eliot - please - "

There was a brief moment, a flash, just before Eliot lined himself up with Quentin's body, where Eliot's unhelpful brain imagined the patches of color against Quentin's pale skin turning black with disease, the sheen to his eyes clouding over with pain and death. They'd walked through the flowers. They'd breathed the air. And yet somehow they were  _ here _ , they were alive, and it had been too close -

"El, where'd you go?" Quentin asked. One of his hands came up to cup along Eliot's jaw. He was still flushed, his voice hoarse and breath heaving. His cock was straining against the plane of his taut stomach. But his expression had turned tender and concerned, instinct having noticed Eliot's brief flicker of remembered fear.

"I love you more than anything," Eliot said, blinking down at Quentin. It wasn't an answer, but Eliot knew that Quentin had heard what really mattered anyway. "And I'm going to fuck your brains out now."

Quentin laughed. Or started to - the sound was choked off as Eliot made good on his promise, shoving inside of him and trying to ignore the errant and trite thought that this feeling was truly home, because, you know, he was still Eliot Waugh and some lines were not to be crossed. And for several endless moments after that, there was nothing else in the universe that mattered at all.

He set a steady, even pace, focusing every ounce of his energy on driving Quentin out of his mind. He'd give him everything. Anything, all of him, always. He folded himself forward, getting a hand under Quentin's knee to push a leg up, pushing himself deeper in and shuddering at the choked off moan this elicited from Quentin. He strained to reach Quentin's mouth at this angle, but Q stretched up to meet him, indulging in sloppy kisses, all tongue and teeth and  _ fuck _ , the the way he felt was not to be believed.

"I'm gonna come," Quentin said, his voice suddenly sharp and bright, on the edge of cracking. "God, fuck, don't stop, I'm - I'm so close, I want - "

It was hardly surprising that Quentin was there already, Eliot thought, without an ounce of ego. He felt just seconds away from exploding as well, the relief so potent inside of him that he  _ needed _ the release as much as he wanted it. He bit Quentin's lip in farewell and then straightened up so he could set a more precise angle, jabbing with familiar ease at Quentin's prostate. A few deep, accurate thrusts and Quentin groaned, reaching a hand down to grab himself, tugging a few quick times and then shuddering as he came, his head thrashing backwards against the dirt and strewn leaves of the forest floor.

He was the most beautiful fucking thing in the goddamn world. Eliot thought maybe he'd said that out loud, but he couldn't be sure - he heard Quentin laugh at something, in any case, as he came, jerking tight into the clutch of Quentin's body and then letting himself collapse without grace directly on top of him, his skin feeling tight and stretched and tingling with the sudden snap of tension. Quentin let out an  _ oof  _ at the sudden weight on top of him, but before Eliot could consider shifting off of him, Q's arms had come up to clutch him tight.

"I love you," Quentin said, kissing Eliot's shoulder, the only place he could reach. "Fuck, I love you."

"You too," Eliot managed, licking at the salt on Quentin's neck. He felt relaxed but also somehow still feral, like he wanted to consume the man under him, take him in to his body and keep him safe there. At the same time, in direct contradiction, he wanted to burrow entirely into Quentin and never come out, hide in the sanctuary of perfect understanding and love.

" _ Fuck _ Bella," Quentin said, seemingly out of nowhere. "Some fucking warning might have been nice."

"Fuck Delilah and Calliope," Eliot said. "They could have said the goddamn things were going to sprout out of nowhere."

Quentin shrugged, the shift of his body finally causing Eliot to slip out. They both moaned a little at the disconnection. "Yeah, maybe. Maybe they didn't know. Or also maybe fuck all of them. Everyone who isn't us, everyone who drops enigmatic clues and lets us wander into danger over and over and over - "

"It's the quest," Eliot said, tracing tuts into the air and sighing as the sweat and slick between them vanished. He bit at the hinge of Quentin's jaw. "I'm told, by certain super-nerds who eat this shit up, that this is how this kind of thing works."

"Yeah, yeah," Quentin said, the smile evident in his voice. His arms tightened around Eliot's back, hands splayed wide against his still tingling skin. And then, belying the fierceness of his embrace - "I'm lying on top of a rock, so I'm going to need you to stop smothering me."

* * *

Eliot did not lie to Quentin. It was not a thing that he did. They'd been together for long enough now that he wasn't very good at getting away with it, even if he'd wanted to. And their relationship was built on trust. He was quite proud of that fact. More proud of himself, really, than he'd ever been in his life, because he'd made a decision one night that he wasn't going to lie to himself, and he wasn't going to lie to the man he loved. And that uncharacteristic moment of open and honest communication had led him to a happiness he'd never even dreamed of achieving.

Deceiving Quentin in any way always made him feel extremely guilty. It was a potent emotion, one that gave him an actual physical stomach ache and made it hard to keep his breathing even. On the rare occasion when dishonesty had come between them in the past, the result had always been distance and fear and discomfort, until the truth finally came spilling out. Whatever discomfort or embarrassment or pain Eliot felt on telling Quentin something personal about himself, it was always infinitely preferable to the break in trust that came from keeping it hidden. That had been true before they were together. Before Fillory, even. He could still remember a voice in his head asking  _ what the hell are you doing?! _ as he heard himself telling Quentin about a school bus, and a bully, and shame, and what it meant to not be alone. He didn't lie to Quentin Coldwater. He'd never been able to pull it off.

And so as they continued through the woods, heading onward toward the phoenix's location, Eliot tried to tell his stupid body that it had no reason to feel guilty. Because he wasn't lying. There was nothing for him to lie about. He didn't  _ know _ , after all. If he knew for certain, that would be one thing, but he  _ didn't. _

The slight shaking in his hands could be nothing more than the come-down from the adrenaline. And the bone-deep exhaustion was hardly surprising. They'd been traveling non-stop for weeks now, and his body was bound to grow fatigued. The headache could be dehydration; Eliot had always been bad about drinking water when he wasn't reminded.

And anyway, if he was getting sick, maybe it was just a coincidence. Quentin seemed perfectly healthy - Eliot had been studying him nearly obsessively all afternoon, and he saw no signs that Quentin was similarly affected, so it couldn't be the flowers. It couldn't be the flowers.

It couldn't.

It could not.

It -

He noticed the first webbing of black veins the following morning, creeping up from his stomach towards his breast bone. And when Quentin glanced at him, caught a strange expression on his face, and asked him what was wrong...

Eliot lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> C'mon. You had to know this was coming. See you next week...


	16. Chapter Sixteen - In Which the Quest Demands Too Much

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two notes:
> 
> 1) You'll see that this fic finally has a finalized chapter count! 23 chapters in total. Based on how I'm doing with my drafting and polishing, I will definitely be maintaining my weekly update schedule through the end of the fic.
> 
> 2) I appreciate you all so much; thank you for coming along with me on this journey!

**QUENTIN**

As they set out the day after their near-miss with the flowers, Quentin occupied his mind by mapping out the minimal number of days between where they were now, and a return home to Teddy. Traveling to the phoenix's last known location would take them the better part of five days, but the good news was that this would put them only another day or so away from the witch's cabin, and then it was only two or so days' travel from there to Whitespire. Assuming nothing else slowed them down, and the phoenix and witch didn't prove too difficult to navigate, they could safely say they'd be ready to break the spell on Arielle in eight days' time. Assuming that getting in and out didn't take longer than a day, and that they were all able to travel swiftly, it would only be a week's journey back home. Sixteen days, then.

Of course, that scenario contained a great deal of assumptions, and Quentin's tenuous hold on optimism kept flickering in and out as they traveled, morning turning to afternoon with hardly a word shared between them. Eliot was in a quiet, moody state of mind, answering questions with one-word answers, staring off into the treeline with apparent concentration. He wouldn't let go of Quentin's hand, though, white-knuckling it in a way that made Quentin think Eliot might still be shaken about the day before.

For that matter, so was he. It was taking everything in him not to think about that poor man in the back of the wagon, the pale and exhausted faces of the two women who loved him and had resigned themselves to their loss. He shook his head, clearing his throat to push away the memories.

"If we felt like fording the stream up here," Quentin said, nodding his head slightly to the west, "I think we might cut a couple of hours off. It'll be more of a swim than if we keep going another couple of miles, but we can always dry ourselves off quickly if we need to."

Eliot was silent beside him, his long legs taking on a slightly slower pace than was natural for him, to match pace with Quentin.

"El?"

"What?" Eliot blinked, turning to look down at him even if they continued walking. "Oh. Yeah, okay."

"Are you... is everything okay?" Quentin asked, furrowing his brow. Was Eliot looking a little pale? It was hard to tell, in the dim light. There was another long silence.

"I don't think we should deviate from Bella's map," Eliot said finally. "Slow and steady, or what have you."

There was an almost stilted note to his voice now, a determined calm that Quentin recognized at once. It meant Eliot was trying very, very hard to ignore some sort of strong emotion, usually a bad one. On top of that, 'slow and steady' was about the last thing Quentin felt like being right now. He was buzzing with energy, desperate for progress.

"You're being weird," Quentin said, staring intently at Eliot's face in the filtered afternoon sunlight.

"Just tired," Eliot said, giving him the smallest and falsest of smiles. It was clearly bullshit, and Quentin was just deciding if he was going to call Eliot on it or not, when something in Eliot's expression shifted, crumpling in on itself. "Okay, no, I - I can't. Quentin. I have to tell you something."

He was squeezing Quentin's hand suddenly hard enough to hurt, and without knowing why, Quentin found himself abruptly in the clutch of intense fear. There was a part of him that maybe already knew what Eliot was about to say. But it was a part buried under layers and layers of desperate denial, enough so that he couldn't have put words to why his heart had just started pounding double-time.

"What?" his voice was catching in his throat. "What's wrong?"

"Let's sit."

"Oh, God. That doesn't sound good," he said, forcing a grotesque attempt at lighthearted humor into his voice. The words fell out of him flat and cold instead. Eliot's hand jerked against his, the tips of his fingers curving inward to dig into the back of Quentin's hand.

Eliot tugged Quentin off the path, searching for a good place to sit down. There was a fallen tree trunk only twenty or so yards away from the tiny footpath, and Eliot pulled Quentin over to it, sitting down without meeting his eye, waiting for Q to sit as well. Quentin did, feeling cold all over.

"Q," Eliot said, even-keeled, and then something in his face crumpled again and he squeezed his eyes shut like he was holding back tears. "Um."

"What is it?" Quentin said, his heart in his throat. "El, talk to me."

"I'm - " Eliot said, swallowing hard. He opened his eyes to meet Quentin's again, and they were wet with tears. "Fuck, this is - I don't even know how to say this."

"Eliot," Quentin said, trying to speak around the constricting of his throat. He tried to smile, but couldn't. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it's not as bad as what I'm imagining, so if you could just - "

Eliot cut him off with a choked sob, releasing Quentin's hand at last, to bury his face in his palms. "It _ is_, though. It is."

And then, before Quentin could process what he was doing, Eliot had dropped his hands to the hem of his shirt, and pulled it up. For a moment Quentin could only stare at the lines of black veins that were spidering their way up Eliot's skin, uncomprehending. "But - no," Quentin said, blank, looking back up into Eliot's face. "No."

"Q, I'm sorry," Eliot said, miserable. "I didn't know how to tell you. It just - I didn't want to believe it, that after everything we've been through..."

"No!" Quentin was on his feet without conscious decision, wheeling away from the sight of Eliot's devastated, frightened, and also resigned face. "But I'm not sick. El, I'm not sick! This shouldn't even be possible."

"I know," Eliot said, every line of his face portraying his exhaustion. "I know. I don't know why, or what happened, but it's - I'm trying to find a way to accept the inevitable here. I'm just so fucking sorry, Quentin, I feel like this is my fault, we should have been more careful, and now - "

"Accept the inevitable?" Quentin repeated, trying to make the words make sense. They didn't. Nothing made sense. He thought he might be about to throw up, or pass out. "What the fuck does that even - "

"Q." Eliot sounded solemn, still somehow calm, as he looked up at Quentin and widened his eyes, imploring. "I might not have very long - "

"Shut up," Quentin said, biting and unmoving. Eliot couldn't say shit like that. It was fucking unforgivable. "You can fuck right off with that, we're going to fix this."

"Q, baby - "

"Don't you _ Q baby _ me right now, Eliot," Quentin said, wheeling back to face him and storming forward. He leaned over Eliot and gripped him by the shoulders. "You do _ not _have my permission to die."

"Bella's notes said it's nearly always fatal, Quentin, and you saw - "

"Bella can fuck off too, then," Quentin said, breathing sharp and fast. He knew he was unraveling, knew he was about to go around a bend and dissolve into a full blown panic attack. But something was holding him in check, right on the razor's edge of the point of no return. Eliot was sick. He was sick and he was - god, he was _ crying _, and Quentin had to - he had to be there for him. He had to be able to do that, the way Eliot always did for him, no matter what.

"Eliot," he said, the single word hoarse and disbelieving. He didn’t know what to say next.

"I'm sorry," Eliot said, voice shaking. "I'm so sorry, Q."

Quentin darted forward, wrapping his arms tight around Eliot, squeezing hard enough to hurt. "It's okay. We're okay. We're gonna - okay, listen, we're going to get camp set up, alright? You - you need to be resting."

He wasn't doing a good job of fooling himself, so he knew Eliot wouldn't believe the attempted calm in his voice. But as he pulled out of the hug, he saw Eliot's eyes bright and wide in gratitude, and knew the effort was worth it. He set up their camp on autopilot, looking around and observing that all things considered, this was actually a pretty good spot for it. Soft, springy grass, a small inlet stream that must have wended its way from the larger river, nearby enough for convenience. A good copse of trees blocking the path from sight in case of other travelers, but not so far away as to get lost in the depths of some sinister creature's territory. Quentin did the protection and concealment spells by himself, leaving Eliot sitting on the fallen tree trunk, and by the time he had finished, some of his jittery fear had settled into a cold ball of determination inside of him.

"Okay, here's what's going to happen," Quentin said, turning to Eliot and blinking back the pain he felt at the sight of his red-rimmed, exhausted eyes. "I am going to keep you alive. You are going to rest. You are going to do everything I say. You are going to keep breathing. Understood?"

Eliot's lip twitched in the approximation of a smile. "Yes, sir."

Quentin's breath rushed out of him in a gust, and he came forward, fighting against the suddenly wobbly state of his legs, to sit beside Eliot on the log again. He framed Eliot's face between his hands, studying every minute flick of his eyes, the faint lines beside his mouth, the stubble catching along his jaw. An intense wave of nausea and guilt swept over him. Eliot didn't look to be on death's door or anything, but he was clearly worn down, and Quentin had failed to notice all day. "How do you feel right now?" he asked.

"Tired," Eliot said. "Just tired. I don't - I don't feel sick for the most part. Just a headache. I feel mostly fine, other than - you know - " he gestured vaguely down at his covered stomach, where the lines of black spider-webbing were marring his skin. "And those only started appearing this morning."

"Right," Quentin said, and then he cleared his throat again for good measure. "Right. Okay. Come lay down. I'm - I'm going to get you something to eat, and you'll just take it easy, and we'll - um. We'll figure out our next steps."

"Quentin," Eliot said, his lips twisted up in a grimace, the furrows between his brows becoming more pronounced. "Come on. There's nothing you can do."

"How did you feel when I fell off that goddamn cliff, El?" Quentin said. There was anger bubbling up inside of him, stronger and stronger the more Eliot crumpled in on himself, clearly already having accepted his fate. "Because that's - that's how I'm going to feel, if you don't suck it up and get through this. Do you want that?"

Eliot's lip quivered. Quentin's stomach swooped. Everything hurt. "No," Eliot finally said, voice uncharacteristically meek. "No, I - I'll. I'll try."

It was pathetic, and stupid, and the rational corner of Quentin's brain was fully aware that Eliot was making a promise he had no ability to keep. But it made him feel just the tiniest bit more centered, in a world that had just turned to chaos around him. He would not give in. He would not collapse into despair and lose hope, abandon a life he'd spent years building. It didn't matter that he had no idea how to get Eliot through this. He'd figure that part out. He had no other choice.

* * *

**ELIOT**

In the hours between realizing he was dying and the moment when he told Quentin, Eliot had tried very hard not to think about what Q's response might be. Of course, he'd failed miserably. He'd pictured Quentin crumbling to pieces right in front of him, horror and shock and desperation suffusing every inch of his expression. It was all too easy to imagine how _ he _ would feel, if he were the one finding out Quentin was on death's door. All things considered, he was goddamn grateful he'd never have to experience that.

He'd also been prepared for the possibility of denial.

What he _ hadn't _ been prepared for was how much the denial was going to suck, maybe even worse than the devastation would have. Quentin was all action for the next several hours, setting up their camp like they intended to stay there for the long haul, instead of just a single night. He got Eliot food and water, created a nest for him out of all of their bedrolls, blankets and pillows. He started a fire, set up their usual suite of protective spells, taking special care over each one, since it was a task they usually shared.

The whole time, Eliot just watched him, the jittery motion of his hands, the determined set of his jaw, the way he couldn't let himself stand still, even after he'd run out of useful things to do. What Eliot wanted was for Quentin to come lie down with him and hold him and tell him he loved him. But that wasn't something he felt prepared to ask for, not when he knew what it would do to Q, to break the brittle determination inside of him so soon.

And so the day wore on, and Quentin took care of Eliot, and Eliot felt himself get worse. Quickly. Alarmingly. By the time the sun was setting, he found he lacked the strength to sit up without Quentin's help. His head was pounding, different from an ordinary headache, like the pressure of putrefaction was gathering inside of his brain and pulsing outward, a signal to himself and all who came near him that he was coming to the end.

The veins had spread from his stomach all the way up to his chest and neck, and out along his shoulders, part of the way down his arms. At one point in the growing dark, he felt Quentin's fingers tracing lines along his face, and knew that the blackness must have started to spread against his temples as well. Like Johann.

Johann was dead by now, Eliot was sure. The thought of it carried with it the smallest touch of revulsion, but also of envy. He tried not to think about it, but beyond the pounding in his head and the soreness in his joints there was also a burning, itching pain along the lines of his arms and legs, across the expanse of stomach and back, curling around every curve of his body, following the veins of black, diseased blood showing stark on his clammy skin. The more he tried not to think about it, the more he thought about it. The more he thought about it, the more it hurt.

"Eliot," Quentin said to him at one point, the only light in their small camp coming from the banked fire. Eliot had the abstract sense that maybe Q had been trying to talk to him already. There was a note of urgency to his tone. He had to answer. Quentin couldn't worry. He didn't want to scare him.

"Q," he said, or tried to say, but the single syllable got caught somewhere on the way out. "_ Q_."

"I'm right here," Quentin said, the pressure of a cool hand against his forehead giving truth to his assurance. "I've got you. Do you think you could - do you think you could eat a little something, sweetheart?"

No, he really didn't think he could. He'd promised to try, to fight, but everything was so - he was so fucking tired and his head hurt and his skin was on _ fire_... he tried to speak again, but heard a whimper escape his mouth instead.

"Hurts," Eliot moaned, his eyes squeezed tight shut. "My head. I'm sorry, Q, I'm sorry - " the pain was building, steady and slow and creeping up to the level of unbearable the more he waited. Every time he managed to open his eyes and see the expression on Quentin's face, he wanted to fucking die. It was worse than the physical pain. He couldn't stop apologizing. He couldn't think of what else to do. He couldn't _ leave him_, oh _ god _ \- what was Quentin going to do when Eliot died? How would he manage? How would he ever recover?

"El," Quentin said, hands soft and careful against his shoulders. "You have nothing to be sorry for, okay? You need to keep your strength up."

The words were coming to Eliot as though from a great distance, warped and under water. He wondered, with a fresh pang of guilt and longing, if Quentin actually believed in what he was saying. Eliot knew he was dying. He knew it with a certainty that no amount of wishing could dispel. And everything hurt so bad. If Quentin hadn't been - if Quentin wasn't stupid enough to love him so much, Eliot would have wished for death already. But he couldn't - he couldn't leave, he had to keep breathing because he couldn't hurt Quentin, and he'd promised to fight, and -

"Eliot, honey, please," Quentin's voice was ragged around the edges, and it was only him speaking that made Eliot realize he'd been talking aloud, babbling through the pain and delirium.

"Sorry," he gasped again, horrified. As if Quentin needed to hear that shit. "I’m _ sorry_."

"If you apologize to me one more time," Quentin said. "I'm withholding sex."

It was such a patently absurd thing to threaten. Morbid in the extreme, frankly, since Eliot didn't think he'd ever felt less like having sex in his entire life. And also, Quentin was so full of shit. He'd never been able to resist Eliot. He was just so cute and desperate for him all the time. It was sweet. It was lovely. It was everything. And Eliot would never have it again. He shouldn’t be thinking about that. He needed to open his eyes so he could look at Quentin. So he could memorize him.

"Yeah, right," he said, croaking through the screaming pain in his throat. "I'm irresistible."

It had been too much to hope that this would make Quentin smile. After the briefest twitch of lips, Q's face crumpled again, the line of his jaw trembling as he ground his teeth together. "Your ego continues to astound."

"I love you," Eliot said, and almost regretted it when he heard the raw, hollowed out sound of it, the way Quentin flinched like it hurt to hear. If he could have thought of a joke, of some quip that would keep their lackluster banter going, he would have said it, because guarded Quentin, on the edge of cracking open but still composed, was better than Quentin flayed open, desperate and worried and terrified. But Eliot couldn't think of the right words. Couldn't really think of any words, except - "I love you."

"I love you too," Quentin said, so soft Eliot almost couldn't hear him. "It's going to be okay, Eliot. We're going to fix this."

In that moment, Eliot wanted Quentin to stop pretending. He wanted his partner to accept what was coming, so that Eliot would be able to hold him through the beginning of his grief. He didn't want Q in denial, even though objectively he was aware of how much it would torture him to watch Quentin fall apart. But here at the end, it seemed crucial that there be total emotional honesty between them. He wanted to ask Quentin to give him that - to hold him and promise him that he'd go home to Teddy and that he'd tell their son about him, that he'd keep on keeping on. He wanted to hear that he'd been a good partner to Quentin, that he'd done well and had lived a good life, that it was okay that he was tired and ready to rest. That he'd been a good father and a good friend and a good magician and a good bartender and a good king and just - _ good _. It was the kind of stuff Quentin loved to tell him, words of reassurance and encouragement whenever Eliot's tendency to hate on himself came to the forefront.

But here, in this unfamiliar patch of forest, mid-way through yet another quest he would never see to the end, his skin on fire and every breath a torment, he knew Quentin wouldn't say any of those things. Because saying them would be the same as giving up. And his brave little Q would never, ever give up on him. Even if Eliot wished that he would.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Eliot slept fitfully that night, moaning and shuddering in his sleep. Quentin sat beside him, holding his hand, and decided not to cry.

He was afraid of crying, afraid of feeling the thing that was waiting behind his breastbone explode out of him. Because if he felt it, if he let it out, he'd collapse inward on himself like a dying star, and he was afraid he'd never surface again. And Eliot needed him to be the strong one right now.

He didn't even feel the exhaustion, just sat up, spine straight and hand wrapped firm around Eliot's clammy fingers. The skin of his hand was cold, even after prolonged contact with Quentin's own, but when Quentin brushed his other hand along the edge of Eliot's hairline, the skin of his forehead was fever hot. He watched the motion of Eliot's eyes under eyelids screwed shut, tight with pain, and pushed the vision of Johann in similar condition firmly out of his mind. Johann wasn't Eliot. Eliot was a magician. They were on a quest. They had magic, and this was Fillory, and they had options.

Bella's journal said that the healing river wouldn't work on this particular sickness, and the two Harper women had confirmed this as well. Quentin had still wanted to try to take Eliot to the river, but he hadn't even gotten as far as suggesting it before realizing the futility. They didn't have any sort of transport magic on them, and Eliot was in absolutely no condition to make a long journey. So Eliot swimming in the river was out. But that didn't mean there wasn't some other magical solution. There was a magical bird awaiting them at the end of four or so days of travel, a bird who, according to some lore, had healing tears. But that was out too, for the same stupid reason. Eliot couldn't travel, and Quentin couldn't leave him. Not for days, not knowing that even if he succeeded, in all likelihood he wouldn't be fast enough, would come back and find - 

And it was right about there that Quentin forced his brain to a halt, shoving the end of the thought into a dark corner where it would undoubtedly come springing back out like a jack-in-a-box at a later date, and drive him mad. But that could wait until after. Until after Eliot was better. Or after Eliot was -

Nope. He wasn't thinking that, either.

Quentin wondered if he’d be able to pull off a messenger spell. There were no convenient bunnies around, but maybe he could fashion something, at least get word to the Ashmores… but what good would that do? If Eliot - if Quentin had to turn around and go home, it was a journey he’d have to make on his own. There was nothing any of his friends could do for him. None of his magic would help him, here. The little he knew of healing magic was superficial. No amount of headache charms was going to stop the pounding in Eliot’s head. No quick popper to disinfect a cut was going to erase the lines of black growing and creeping over every inch of his skin.

For the next day, things got steadily worse, and Quentin had to work harder and harder to keep himself in denial about what was happening. The mantra, the one he kept playing in his head like a soundtrack - _ we’re magicians, we have magic, we can fix this _ \- wasn’t working. He kept thinking it anyway, out of habit.

Eliot couldn’t keep food down, turned pale and nearly green at the thought of eating, but dutifully accepted Quentin’s every attempt to care for him, proffering weak smiles and shaky touches of encouragement whenever he was lucid enough to give them. By the end of the second day, the lucid moments were few and far between, and Quentin had been worn down enough to stop flinching every time Eliot let out a whimper of pain. Another night passed, Eliot shuddering and twitching through a restless and aching sleep.

And then the third day - the clearing was starting to fill with pre-dawn light when Eliot's shifting and stirring became more pronounced, and the flutter of his eyelids increased. Quentin rubbed circles against the ball of Eliot's thumb, staring at his face and doing his best to ignore the veins that were encroaching along his perfect cheekbones. When Eliot's eyes finally fluttered open, they were clouded over with confusion. Quentin bit down on the inside of his cheek hard, to stop himself from sobbing.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey, Q," Eliot said. "Fuck, you look exhausted." He actually looked concerned for Quentin's well-being, which was almost funny, under the circumstances. But Quentin didn't laugh, because if he did his body would think that releasing emotions was a thing it was allowed to do, and then he'd be right back on the edge of collapse.

"I'm okay. How are you feeling?"

"Fucking sucks," Eliot said, his mouth turning down into a frown. "But better than yesterday. Less - sharp, I think."

"Yeah?"

"I - " Eliot cut himself off, his eyes darting over Quentin's face and then down to his own arm, where the lines of black were as vivid as anything, even in the dim light. "I don't think it's a good sign, though."

"Well," Quentin said. "We don't know how this shit works, right? It's a magic illness, so the symptoms won't necessarily map out the way they would normally. Maybe - "

"Q," Eliot said, sympathy evident in the one syllable. "You're right that we don't know, but we also _ do _ know that - "

"It's pointless to think the worst." There was a false brightness in Quentin's tone that he fucking hated in himself. He didn't feel optimistic, or like things were going to work out okay. But he also couldn't feel the opposite, either. He was stuck in limbo, a place where if he just held on to the brittle idea of progress, he could avoid acknowledging the worst.

"Q, I'm too tired to carry the torch," Eliot said, sounding weary down to his very bones. "I don't - I can't pretend right now. I'm sorry."

He meant the optimism torch - the metaphorical drive and belief in their chances of success, the one they’d traded off again and again over the course of their quest. Optimistic was about the last thing in the world Quentin felt like. The corner of his brain where all the dark thoughts were waiting was getting very, very crowded, and some of the thoughts were leaping out at him, struggling for escape. The fear was building up behind his breastbone, creating a pressure that was making it difficult to breathe. When he let himself flicker into that head-space, just for a moment, he found that he very much wanted to curl up next to Eliot and fall asleep and never wake up.

"I just don't understand why you got sick and I didn't," Quentin said, the words warped in his throat.

"Just my good luck, I guess," Eliot said, looking up at Quentin with infinite tenderness. Fuck him.

"Fuck you."

Eliot squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed. It looked painful. Quentin could see his limbs shaking. "I'm sorry," Eliot said, pained and quiet.

"You - " Quentin said. "You're the one who's - sick. I shouldn't be - _ I'm _sorry, El." God, he'd never felt anything worse than this. Nothing had ever hurt more. And he was taking it out on Eliot, who by all rights had the much more legitimate reason to complain...

But Eliot was shaking his head, blinking open his squinting eyes with what looked to be a great deal of effort. "You'd give anything to switch places with me right now," Eliot said. "Believe me, I know that. I'm the lucky one, Q."

Eliot's eyes were wide and plaintive, and Quentin knew he was craving comfort. If he were a halfway decent person, he'd go over to Eliot right now, sit beside him, card his fingers through Eliot's hair in the way he liked, whisper words of encouragement and comfort to him. He'd let Eliot rest, let him give in to his exhaustion. Let him slip away. He'd hide his own broken heart and be strong for Eliot, give him reassurances, hold his hand as he took his last breaths...

He couldn't. He just fucking could not. Instead he started pacing, ignoring the way Eliot's eyes were tracing every movement, like he was trying to memorize him, looking his fill before it was too late and he'd never be able to look at anything ever again. Quentin should probably be taking this chance to study Eliot's face too, but he had no desire to remember him like this, rail thin and clammy-faced, pain etched into every line of his body.

"Look," Eliot said, and he tried to sit up on one elbow. Quentin fought the urge to rush over and help him, instinctively defensive against whatever Eliot was about to say with that pragmatic fucking tone of his. "I'm not giving up, Q. I will fight fucking tooth and nail to stay alive. I swear. But we need to have a conversation, about what you're going to do if - "

"Are you serious?" Quentin said. His arms had gone around his stomach, holding tight. He wasn't sure if he was about to start screaming or crying or both. "You're going to make me do this?"

"Q, please," Eliot said. "I need to know that you - "

"That what? That I'll be okay? Because I _ won't _ be. I won't be okay ever again, Eliot." Quentin could hear his voice getting louder, echoing around their campsite, and for a moment he almost let his frustration and grief bubble completely over. He wanted to scream at Eliot for putting him in this position, for making him suffer like this. He wanted to throw things, wanted to throw himself to the ground like Teddy during a tantrum. But he caught sight of Eliot's pale, exhausted face, the way his eyes had widened and his lips had started to tremble. "El," he said, suddenly exhausted. He should apologize. He couldn't find the words.

"Q," Eliot said. "You will be. You have to be. I'm sorry, I'm _ so _sorry, but you have to be okay."

Quentin let the last of his frenetic energy vibrate up and out of his arms, and he went over to Eliot's bedroll, slumping to the ground next to him. "How the fuck would you feel, if you were me?" he asked, quiet and broken.

"Awful," Eliot answered immediately. Quentin hated the crackling, weak sound of his normally beautiful voice. "Like my whole world was ending."

"Well there you go, then."

"But you've got to - you need to be okay, Q. Not for me, or for yourself, even. For Teddy. You have to go home to our son and you have to... to... I don't know, fake it 'til you make it."

"Jesus, like that's going to work."

"For Teddy," Eliot repeated.

"Fuck you," Quentin said, much less vitriolic this time. "I know." It felt like defeat just to say it. "I know, El. I get it."

"Do you have any idea how much I love you?" Eliot whispered, like he’d been waiting for the opportunity to say the words. "It's astonishing to me. Every day I think - God, I've never loved him more. This is the limits of what one human being could possibly feel for another and then I wake up the next morning, and I just love you more. You’re the best person I’ve ever known, Q, and I - "

"Eliot," Quentin said. "I don't want to hear this. I don't want - "

"I need to say it," Eliot said. "Please, Q. I'm dying, and we both know that."

"You said you wouldn't give up," Quentin said, but the heat had gone out from him. The way Eliot was looking at him - a mixture of longing and compassion and something close to pity...

"I'm not giving up," Eliot croaked back at him. "I'm being realistic. And I'm tired, and I'm scared, and I just need to be weak for a second, Q. I need to be scared of dying and scared of leaving you alone. And I need you to come down here and hold me so we can both cry about it a little."

"Jesus," Quentin huffed, almost annoyed. "Jesus, I'm - this isn't fair, this is so _ wrong_, El." But after making Eliot drink some water and eat a few bites of breakfast, he found himself completely incapable of denying Eliot's wide and pleading eyes any longer. He told himself he wasn't giving up, just taking a break, but as he curled himself around Eliot's prone body, nestling his face into his shoulder, he could feel the day and a half of sleepless terror catch up to him, swoop over him in one rushing wave. There was something almost like relief in the thought that there was nothing else he could do.

And if that was true, then he was about to lose the one person in his life who had made him believe he could be happy. And if that was true, he was never going to be happy again. And if that was true, he -

"El," Quentin said. "I love you. With everything. All of me. All of it. I love you."

"I know," Eliot said, sounding mournful. "God, right now I wish you didn't. I wish this wasn't going to hurt you so bad."

"I wouldn't trade any of it," Quentin said. "Not a single second, no matter what."

Eliot made a trapped, hurt sound in the back of his throat, and tightened his arm around Quentin. The pressure was feeble, Eliot's arm cold even through the fabric of Quentin's shirt. "I thought you didn't want to do the sentimental goodbye stuff."

"I don't," Quentin said at once. It didn't matter, there weren't words that could express any of it anyway. Except for one simple, unassailable fact. "But you do."

"Q," Eliot said, something close to awe coming through the pain in his voice. "I know you said to stop apologizing, but I'm just - I'm so - "

"I know," Quentin said, soothing Eliot the way he did with Teddy when his son was scared or upset. "I know, honey."

For a while they lay together in silence, and when Quentin started to cry, it wasn't the dam breaking loose inside of him the way he'd thought it would be. It was more like everything he'd been pretending he didn't feel started to leak slowly from him, from the skin of his body, from somewhere low in his gut. He kept thinking about Teddy's big brown eyes, so like his own, overflowing with tears when he was told he'd never see his mother or his papa ever again. Because if - when - Eliot - when Eliot _ died _, then Quentin had to go home. To his son. He couldn't complete the quest, he couldn't risk leaving Teddy alone.

It was just another mission Quentin had failed to complete. He was failing Eliot, and in doing so he'd failed Arielle. Failed Teddy. And back before any of that, he'd failed the entire world, ripping magic from it, completely unable to finish the mosaic that would help to restore it for everyone.

"You know what's just manifestly unfair about this whole thing?" Quentin asked eventually, snuffling quietly against Eliot's shoulder.

"What's that?"

"This isn't even part of the fucking quest. I mean, you're not even dying for like... a cause."

Eliot tried to laugh, but the crackling in his chest led to a brief coughing fit. Quentin's arms came up around Eliot's ruined body, trying to hold him still through it. "It does seem like a fucking joke, doesn't it? After all the shit we've gone through, and this just comes out of nowhere and takes me out. Where's the narrative justice in that?"

"If this were a Fillory book," Quentin mused, tapping his thumb against Eliot's chest, right over his thready heartbeat, "there would be some sort of crossroads, a riddle to solve or a sacrifice to make, and then I'd be able to save you."

"A quest within a quest within a quest," Eliot said. "A little too meta for my taste."

He was making a joke, even now, his voice lilting in a teasing, pleasant sort of way, the irreverent humor trying to fight its way through pain and exhaustion. Quentin turned to burrow his face into Eliot's shoulder, breathing deep, fighting back against a scream of rage. How much longer did he have? How much longer would he stay awake? And if Eliot slipped into slumber right here and now, would he ever wake up again?

"I don't think I can do it," Quentin said suddenly, a new thought spearing through his general miasma of pain and disbelief. "The fucking mosaic. I don't think I can - I mean, it doesn't even matter, does it? What's the point? I'm supposed to go home and get Teddy and just stare at a fucking unsolvable puzzle until I get old and die. Jesus Christ, what's the _ point_, El?"

"The point is magic, Quentin," Eliot said, infinitely patient. "The point is the people we love, and helping them."

"What fucking good is magic?" Quentin grumbled, hating the world, hating magic, hating himself, maybe even hating Eliot a little bit for being so -_ at peace _ or whatever.

"Coming from you that's practically sacrilege," Eliot said. He turned his face slightly so he could press his dry and cracked lips against Quentin's forehead. The tenderness in the gesture was like a slap in the face, another reminder in the endless list of reminders of what Quentin was about to lose. "I thought you were magic's biggest cheerleader."

"No, I'm serious," Quentin said, biting his lip hard to stop the welling of tears. He was tired of crying, suddenly. He had to save some of his energy for more wailing hysterics once the love of his life died in his arms. "I'm fucking serious, Eliot. This whole thing, this whole quest - solving the mosaic, finding the key - it's all to bring magic back. But here we are, in a land bursting with the damn stuff, and what good is it doing us? We can't use magic to solve the mosaic, we can't just snap our fingers and save Arielle, we can't even figure out basic fucking transportation. I can't save you, Eliot. Nothing's more important than that and I can't do it. It's all goddamn useless."

"Don't," Eliot said, and his arms tightened around Quentin. The feebleness of his embrace was making Quentin want to scream again. "Don't, please. I know - I know this sucks, Q, but you can't let it - Quentin?"

He paused, a note of apparent alarm in his voice, because Quentin had just sat up, pulling away from Eliot's arms.

"I just - Q, don’t be mad, okay, I’m just trying to help you - ”

"No," Quentin said, shaking his head as his brain tried to catch up with the sudden dizzy sensation of epiphany. "It couldn't be that easy."

"Q," Eliot said. "What are you talking - "

"What did he say? He said we wouldn't know the price until it was time to pay it?"

"Who - "

"The - the _ Watcher_, El." Quentin was already scrambling over to his pack, trying to swallow down the frantic thumping of his heart. It was like something inside of him had just woken up. It was almost painful, the intensity of sudden hope, sprung up out of barren desolation within him. He'd been so exhausted just moments ago, ready to lie down next to Eliot and feel the life seep out of him, ready to curl up and give in and - and now, suddenly, everything was technicolor.

He spun back to Eliot, holding the jar of river water tightly in both hands. "I'm immune. To the poison. Because I swam in the goddamn fucking river, and you _ didn't_."

Eliot's bloodshot eyes widened. "Holy shit."

"This can - this can cure you."

"But, Q," Eliot said. "Q, they said that the healing river wouldn't - "

"This isn't the healing river, this is water from it, imbued with magic for a ritual spell. Eliot, it's part of the _ quest_."

"I - Quentin, I'm not sure if - "

“Oh, my _ God_, Eliot - I insisted that I be the one to go in the water, I fucking _ made _ you let me do it, and now you’re - ”

“Q, you’re spiraling,” Eliot said, true anxiety in his voice. “We can’t even know if you’re right about this, sweetheart.”

"No, no it makes sense doesn't it?" Quentin was so fucking sure he _ was _right that he was choosing to ignore the look of doubt and unease in Eliot's eyes. "It's supposed to be another choice. I can use this to save you, but it means using up one of the ingredients for the spell, giving up on the quest."

"But then we can't, Q. We can't, or all of this has been for nothing - "

"So what?" Quentin said, dismissing everything they'd worked for with a wave of his hands. "So _ what_, Eliot? If there's even a fraction of a chance that I'm right about this..."

"Q, we can't," Eliot repeated, lips turned down into a frown. God, he sounded so quiet and weak, it was making Quentin's heart pound and his head ache. "We need it. You've read the spell - we don't get a second chance at this."

"You're going to die, El," Quentin said. "Do I look like I give a fuck about anything else right now?"

"But Ari - "

"Don't ask me to do this without you," Quentin begged. "Please, Eliot. Please listen to what you're asking of me and try to put yourself in my shoes." At that moment, Quentin truly could not have cared less about Arielle, about everything they'd fought so hard to achieve. He didn't even have the space inside of him, in that moment, to feel guilty about it. “El, you promised. You said you’d throw the quest to stay alive for me.”

Eliot was silent for a long moment, the only sound in the camp his labored, unsteady breathing. Quentin couldn't look away from the pained expression on his face, the way every swallow, every breath, every word seemed to come at a great cost. He could feel his own heart straining and wailing in his chest cavity, beating loud - too loud - like it was trying to make up for the faltering beat inside of Eliot's body. Finally, Eliot nodded, his eyes fluttering madly in an effort to stay open. "Okay. Okay, Q, you're right. Let's try."

The relief was painful in its intensity. For a moment Quentin could only tremble, frozen in gratitude and joy. "Thank you. God, _ thank you_."

"Don't thank me," Eliot rasped, frowning. "I may have just lost us everything."

"Not everything," Quentin said fervently. He took up the jar again, staring at the swirling liquid inside as if willing it to make him promises. "Not the most important thing."

Eliot let out snort. "You’re incredibly biased.”

Quentin’s hand was already tightening around the lid of the jar when Eliot threw an arm out, brushing along Quentin’s wrist with fumbling, icy fingers. “Wait.”

“_No _, I’m doing this, with or without your permission.”

“No, I just meant - wait, what if we find a way to - I mean, what if we use only some of it, and save the rest for Ari? Find a way to save us both?”

There was too much of Eliot inside of Quentin’s brain for him to be sparing a thought for Arielle, but at the sound of her name, affectionate in Eliot’s crackling voice, Quentin pictured her. Where was she right now? Dressed in fine gowns, up at Whitespire, on the arms of a handsome, deceitful man? A doll, dressed up and controlled for the convenience and amusement of the rich and powerful. It was so antithetical to who she was as a person. It was the kind of thought that had been making Quentin sick with worry and anger ever since they’d first learned what was wrong with her. In the face of Eliot dying before his eyes, none of that seemed as important. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t come to his senses eventually. If there was a way to save both of them…

“How?” he asked, meeting Eliot’s eyes. He was comforted by the blaze of determination and hope in his expression, shining even through the pallid sheen of sweat and the curling black lines of disease.

“The jar has a magical field protecting the contents, right? Well, what if we just expand the protections already on it - create a bubble that encompasses the jar and both of us, and then you can splash some of the water on me, or whatever, but the whole thing’s still inside the magical protections.”

“That’s complicated stuff, El, I’m not sure - ”

“There’s no harm in trying it,” Eliot said, surprisingly firm even in his obvious exhaustion.

And so they did, working out the circumstances together on a blank sheet in Bella’s notebook, tracing through the spell for practice. Eliot was far too weak to do much casting, but Quentin anchored his own magic in the strength of Eliot’s natural wellspring.

The magic felt wonderful, pulling and coursing through his body and out into the air around him, somehow refreshing after the last few days of helplessness. And even if it felt silly to dribble a bit of the lukewarm river water across Eliot’s face, and a few drops down his throat for good measure, it still felt indescribably good to be trying _ something _, even without real proof that it would do anything at all.

And afterwards, with the jar hastily screwed closed and set aside, the magic bubble contracted back around to snap into place around the glass, Quentin could do nothing but hold Eliot to him and wait. He wished there were gods in this world who weren’t such dickholes, but he wasn’t above praying to Ember and Umber and God and, honestly, Aslan, and whoever else, no matter his own personal beliefs.

“Do you feel anything?” Quentin asked, his lips pressed into the sweaty curls along Eliot’s hairline. He was afraid to pull away and look.

For a moment, Eliot didn’t respond, just took a few deep, even breaths. “I - don’t know. I can’t tell. Adrenaline, but that could just be…” he trailed off, curling his body tighter into Quentin’s. “I don’t know, Q. I’m sorry. I don’t - I really don’t want to leave you, Q. I don’t - I’d never want that. I want to stay.”

“You will,” Quentin said, pure nonsense. He squeezed him tight enough that he felt Eliot tense in pain, and then released him slowly, holding a hand behind his neck to support his head as he lowered him back down into the bedroll. He looked into those perfect eyes, still clouded with exhaustion and pain, and - “Oh, fuck.”

“What?” Eliot blinked up at him, the lines around his mouth tightening.

“The veins - they’re - _ moving_.”

And they were - they were squirming, almost like insects, although Quentin decided not to mention that part to Eliot. It almost looked like they were retreating, pulling back from his skin and disappearing into Eliot’s hairline. Quentin grabbed one of Eliot’s arms, grasping tight, in time to see the veins there behaving in the same way. But were they vanishing because he was getting better, or were they sinking into his skin, going deep into the core of him, ready to -

“How do you feel?” Quentin asked, rough with panic. “El? Do you feel - are you okay? Talk to me.”

“I don’t _ know_, Q, I can’t tell, I think - ” Eliot cut himself off with a gasp, a wet sound of pain catching in his throat.

“El?” Quentin tore his eyes away from the veins on Eliot’s collarbone, snapping up to meet his eyes. They had gone wide with astonishment. “_ Eliot_?”

“Oh,” Eliot said, like he was remembering something he’d forgotten to do, and then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped forward, limp in Quentin’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. Sorry?


	17. Chapter Seventeen - In Which They Get Back to Making Progress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're celebrating something this week, I hope you have an excellent celebration! Or just... an excellent week in general!
> 
> Just one more update in 2019, next Monday... We are hitting the home stretch, folks. Thanks as always for your support!

**ELIOT**

Eliot did not think about his childhood. It was a self-preservation thing, sure, but also the fact that most of what he'd gone through as a kid, even the not-awful stuff, wasn't really worth remembering. But for whatever reason, in that moment, as darkness blanketed him like a comforting end, he thought about the farmhouse where he’d grown up. It was actually quite a nice place, or - rather, it might have been a nice place once. Decades of neglect in the hands of his parents and his father’s parents before them had left it worn down and creaky, but the bones were good, and there was a wide porch out back that Eliot could run to, a place to sit and look out on the blankness of nature, and be alone.

He could never stay there for long - if his father or his older brother caught him being idle, he’d be put to work. It was usually safer to hide out in the barn with the horses, or pretend to make himself busy with some of the other animals. But there were moments, sometimes before dawn, when Eliot would lie out on the slightly rotted slats of wood and he would look up at a sky that was bright and clear and empty, and he would feel…

Like his life didn’t matter. But like, in a _ good _ way. It was a nihilism that Eliot didn’t have the vocabulary for at the time, but later in life he realized that the thought of his own insignificance was comforting because it meant that if he fucked up, nothing really important would go wrong. Nobody really loved him, so he couldn’t really hurt anyone. It gave him permission to be cruel, to do whatever it took to survive, damn the consequences for anyone else.

And then Eliot grew up. He’d still sometimes go out on that porch and he’d look up at the big blue sky and the endless fields, turning his back on the house and the family that he hated, all while feeling trapped within them… and the majesty of the natural world made him furious. He wanted to fucking _ matter_. Maybe not to anyone in specific, because that was a pipe dream and a thing that only happened to good people, but he wanted to matter to the _ world_. He wanted to make an impact, have a lasting effect as he moved through his life, and that was never going to happen in the middle of Bumfuck Indiana with a brother and father who hit him and a mother who pretended not to notice.

He became Eliot Waugh, his greatest creation. His finest, most crafted performance. He’d never let anyone see the truth of him, because there was nothing there that anyone would want, anyway. He’d come close with Margo, but she understood the armor he wore, loved it as a part of himself. And then he’d fallen in love with Quentin Coldwater, and he’d - he’d realized the paralyzing joy and fear of _ mattering _ to someone. To more than one someone, once he’d met Arielle. Once he’d had Teddy.

And he couldn’t pretend that his actions weren’t important anymore, because in loving Quentin, and in being loved by him, he suddenly had the power to hurt something that _ did _ matter. Something that mattered more than anything. In the miasma of thought and memory, Eliot felt something close to a stab of resentment. All of this _ caring _ and _ loving _ and _ mattering _ meant that he couldn’t slip away into the comforting coolness of unconsciousness. He couldn’t give a final metaphysical middle finger to a world of pain and just fuck off into the afterlife. He kind of wanted to. He _ really _ wanted to. But there was just one problem - someone was saying his name.

"El. El, honey, I need you to wake up.” The voice sounded so brittle, so scared. Eliot found within himself the desire to answer, but wasn't sure if he could. "El? _ Eliot _, come on. Please."

The thing was, he was just so _ comfortable_. Eliot hadn't quite appreciated how much pain he'd been in until now, when he was finally free of the crushing pressure, the burning pinpricks of agony spreading over his skin. It was gone now, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to slip into the embrace of oblivion, let slumber carry him away into a final darkness. Wouldn’t it be nice to rest? To finally stop _ trying _ so hard all the damn time?

But there was something wrong - there was a pressure against his chest, hands gripping into his shirtfront. Quentin's voice - he wasn't speaking anymore, just making high, agonized keening sounds that made Eliot's closed eyes prick with pain. Quentin shouldn't sound like that. Ever. He had to make it better. He had to protect him.

He felt a spot of wetness on his collarbone, heard a few great shuddering gasps right up against his skin. He was aware of his body again, not just the absence of pain, but its place in the world, lying cocooned in a nest of blankets and bedrolls, his head propped up, his arms limp and still at his sides. The air was crisp but not too cold, there was the heat of a fire somewhere nearby, wafting over to him on tiny air currents here on the forest floor. And there was a weight and warmth pressing him down further into the blankets - Quentin was laying almost entirely on top of him, whimpering his way back towards actual coherence, a few words stuttering out among the sobbing. "Please. God, _ please_, El. Don't make me live without you."

"It's okay," Eliot tried to say. His lips were cracked and dry and he could barely make them move. But a sound did come out, something hoarse and pained but undeniable in the silence of their camp. It worked - Quentin stopped crying at once, his entire body going tense.

"El?" he said, and his fingertips pressed hard into the skin of Eliot's chest.

"You're crushing me," Eliot said. He'd meant it to sound like a joke, but Quentin gave a gasp of horror and sat up off of him at once. Eliot blinked open his eyes, wanting to reach for him and pull him back down, but he wasn't sure he could move.

"Oh, God. I'm sorry. I'm - " Quentin blubbered, his hands shaking so hard they were practically vibrating. "Eliot - Eliot - are you - "

"I think it worked," Eliot said, mushy and lacking even basic diction.

Quentin made a sound deep in his throat, like a laugh, and a sob, disbelieving and worshipful. "The lines - the veins - they disappeared, El, and you were looking at me, just - _ looking _at me, and I thought it was okay and then you just - your eyes rolled up - I couldn't - I couldn't fucking wake you up. Oh, Jesus, I thought - "

"I'm sorry," Eliot said, stricken by the look on Quentin's face, the way every drop of blood seemed to have rushed away, leaving his skin clammy and paper-white. His hair was scrunched up and sweat-drenched, his hand still shaking even as he brought them back to cradle Eliot's face between them. "I'm sorry I scared you, baby."

"_Scared _ me," Quentin practically shouted, eyes going wide as they darted over Eliot's face, taking in every inch. "I don't - there aren't _ words_, Eliot."

"I know," Eliot said. His arms felt like giant bruises, the effort of lifting them up to pull Quentin down to him was more than he could manage. "Trust me, Q, I fucking know."

That seemed to cut through some of Quentin's frenetic relief. He blinked down at Eliot with a miserable little frown on his face, and then blinked, nodding his head and swallowing audibly. "Yeah, I guess you do."

With much more effort than Eliot liked, he managed to lever himself up on his arms so he was sitting halfway up, and Quentin wrapped his arms immediately around him to help him the rest of the way, then rested with his forehead pressed to the side of Eliot's temple for a long moment, breathing through pursed lips until he finally managed to regulate the heaving of his chest. Eliot was hazy, dizzy, dehydrated, starving, aching in every inch of his body. He also knew he was going to fucking _ live_, and the relief of it was one of the best things he'd ever felt. And he could count Quentin's heartbeats, pressed up against his side, and know that Quentin was okay too, that he'd keep being okay, because Eliot was still breathing.

"Did the jar hold up?" he croaked after several minutes of silence, leaning most of his weight against Quentin, who seemed content to hold him up.

"The jar?" Quentin asked, fuzzy and dreamlike. He pressed his face further into the skin above Eliot's shirt, nuzzling his nose against Eliot's sweaty skin. They both smelled awful, but Quentin clearly didn't care.

"The ingredient, Q."

"Oh. I don't know. I was - a little preoccupied."

Eliot laughed, the sound catching in his dry throat. It made him cough, his frail body shuddering against Quentin's. Quentin went still against him and then loosened his arms slightly, pressing down on Eliot's shoulder to guide him onto his back.

"I'll check," Quentin said, soothing. Eliot closed his eyes as Q moved away from him, drifting on the dreamlike absence of death, the ability to plan for a tomorrow he never thought he'd reach.

"It's... still glowing?" Quentin said, coming forward and crouching back down beside Eliot. Eliot blinked his eyes open and examined the jar that Quentin was holding up for him. They'd used less than half of the water inside. The cool, nearly electric-blue glow of the spell's protective magical shield was still there, but it seemed faded somehow, not as vibrant and strong as Eliot remembered.

"Okay," he said, nodding and then regretting it as spasms of residual pain shot through his temples. "Okay, that's good, then. Maybe we get the best of both worlds."

Quentin clearly didn't believe his feeble attempt at confidence. Equally clearly, he was too relieved to think about the implications very hard. Eliot blinked away the image in his mind of Arielle, robotic and compliant, drifting through life at the command of a duplicitous man. It was done - they'd made their choice, and all they could do now was keep fighting for Ari, in whatever way they had left. Quentin returned the jar to the bag along with the others, and was back at Eliot's side within seconds. He carded a hand gently through the snags in Eliot's frizzy, sweat-soaked hair.

"You need to get some rest," Quentin said, smiling down at him with shining eyes.

"We probably need to get a move on," Eliot countered, with a frown. Quentin literally scoffed at him, his bright eyes rolling extravagantly.

"Very funny. You're staying put for at least another day, you need to regain your strength. You're rail-thin, El."

"Are you saying you're not attracted to me anymore, now that I've been cast in the role of an emaciated Victorian, wasting away from the consumption up in the attic?" The dramatics of this long sentence had taken every ounce of breath in Eliot's lungs, every ounce of energy in his drained body. But the smile and the eye-roll from Quentin made it worth it. His partner ducked down to pepper kisses along his forehead and the bridge of his nose, ending with the lightest of pecks against his cracked and dry mouth.

"You're a heart-breaker as always, dear," Quentin said. "Now get some rest." He made to get up, probably to go fetch water, or tidy up the camp, or reinforce their protective shields. But Eliot's hand reached out and rested against Quentin's knee before he could stand, and just like Eliot knew would happen, Q froze, turning to look down at him again.

"I'll rest," Eliot promised, solemn and sure. "But only if you come down here and close your eyes for a bit." Still shaky and worn down, Eliot managed to lift a hand up and brush it along the dark circles under Quentin's eyes. "You look about ready to collapse, darling."

Quentin's face scrunched up against another onslaught of tears, and Eliot's feeling of tenderness only grew. "Okay," Quentin whispered, bringing a hand up to hold Eliot's palm to his cheek. "Okay, I will."

He did pull away for a moment, to fetch Eliot some clean water of the non-magical variety, which Eliot gulped down, grateful for the cool freshness of the liquid against his dry lips and hoarse throat. And then Q curled around him again, the same way he had earlier that very afternoon, before he'd realized that they had a chance to save Eliot's life. But this time the slump of his body wasn't resignation or despair. It was pure and clean relief, a release that gave exhaustion permission to take over. Eliot joined him in it, curling an arm around Quentin's body, burying his face in his hair. He was asleep before he had time to think another thought.

* * *

Quentin didn’t let them leave for another day and a half. He made Eliot sleep through the night, then spent the following day and night allowing him the briefest of excursions, letting him walk in circles around their camp, assisting him as he cast magic for some minor upkeep of their protective shields. Quentin was a motherfucking nightmare when he was in a coddling mood, but Eliot supposed he couldn’t really complain. Every time he found himself ready to snap, he’d catch sight of Quentin’s still-pale skin, the way his eyes flicked to track every insignificant movement of Eliot’s body. And he remembered how tender and sore and tiny he’d felt when he’d had Q back in his arms after Quentin’s own plummet off the side of the ravine. Quentin had been patient with him, had let him cry and carry on as much as he’d needed to, more or less. He could try and do the same in return.

His patience lasted him through most of their first morning of travel towards the phoenix. Quentin set a slow pace, making Eliot stop to eat and hydrate and rest regularly. And fair enough, Eliot needed the rest as his body recovered from the quick yet brutal illness it had endured. But still, there were only so many times he could tolerate Quentin’s hand, gentle and guiding on his elbow, steering him towards a fallen log or an area of spongy moss, his voice soothing as he suggested they take ten minutes to rest before continuing on.

Because like - come _ on_. He wasn’t on death’s door anymore. And they had something important they were trying to do. Quentin seemed to have lost the plot just a little bit.

“You do realize we’ve fucked up our entire time table, don’t you?” Eliot groused, some time in the early afternoon. “I mean, the detour was inevitable I suppose, but I’d think you’d feel at least _ some _ sense of urgency.”

Quentin shot him a disparaging look. “El, you’re not at full strength. You’ve got to give yourself time to recover.”

“Quentin - ” Eliot hesitated, took a deep breath to control the impatience broiling through him. “Q, I’m worried about Arielle. I really want this whole thing to be over with.”

If Eliot had expected Quentin to soften at that, to nod his head and pick up the pace, he was disappointed to instead receive a sharp glare. “You think I’m not worried about Ari? You think I wouldn’t give - you think I’m not obsessing over where she is, what she’s doing, what she’s being _ forced _ to - ” he cut himself off with a snap of his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Eliot said, reaching for Quentin’s hand and feeling oddly relieved when his touch was accepted. “It’s just _ frustrating _ to be moving so goddamn slowly when we already lost three days lying around.”

Quentin’s lip twitched downward at that euphemistic description of what they’d been doing the last few days. Eliot had certainly been laying down, but he supposed one could hardly describe his slow descent into near-death as ‘lying around.’

“The thing is,” Eliot continued, clearing his throat and smoothing his thumb over Quentin’s knuckles in a soothing gesture, “Arielle’s really fucking strong, and ordinarily I’d trust her to look after herself. But nothing about this situation is ordinary. She needs us, and I don’t think we should lose sight of that.” Quentin opened his mouth to retort, and Eliot cut him off, reading his mind - “Yes, I know I’m being a bit of a hypocrite. I’m just saying, after _ your _ brush with death, you’re the one who convinced me we needed to keep our eyes on the prize. I’m trying to return the favor, here.”

“You don’t get it,” Quentin said. The agitation in his voice was accompanied by a slight increase in his stride. Eliot frowned at the harshness in the words, but wasn’t going to complain about speeding up. “This whole quest… I’ve just been thinking that we might have failed Ari before we even started.”

“What does that mean?” Eliot said, chest tight. The phantom of Arielle’s smiling face flitted across his mind again. And then a more muted image of Margo, a representation of everything he’d already given up to get Ari back. “We’ve done everything we could for her. We’re _ doing _ everything - ”

“I didn’t fucking hesitate for one _ second_,” Quentin said. “I thought the water might save you, and I pushed for it. I didn’t even feel guilty. And now I’m feeling guilty for _ not _ feeling guilty. The fact is, Eliot, I’d choose you every fucking time. And you’d choose me. And we both _ know _ that, so what if we’re not the right people to be doing this?”

“Okay…” Eliot said, trying to catch up to Quentin’s train of thought. “Okay, _ what _ ? Who the hell else is supposed to do it? Taseer’s not exactly an option. Her parents? Her brothers?” 

“I don’t know, _ maybe_,” Quentin snapped. “Think about it. Rita told us what happened to her. She had the love of her life and her brother going on the quest for her. Both of them loved Rita, both of them put her first. They were partners for the quest, but they had their priorities straight - in the same situation, Bella would have sacrificed anything, _ anyone _, to save Rita. And that’s not true for us, so what - ”

“But what does it matter?” Eliot interrupted. “Seriously, Q, what does it matter? Bella and Rodney both survived to the end of the quest. They got Rita back, nobody had to fucking _ die_. I know quests involve sacrifice and hardship and all that, but there’s nothing in the goddamn rulebook that requires loss of life.”

“But what if - ”

“Q, stop. Jesus Christ, just - you would never let me die, even if it was the only way to save Arielle. And you’d better fucking tell me you’d never let _ yourself _ die, either. I’m sorry, but nothing’s worth that.”

They were still walking through the woods, still holding hands, and even in his agitation, Eliot was grateful for the grounding touch. He needed it, especially when Quentin kept talking.

“But that’s just exactly my point. We’re not objective about this. What if one of us _ does _ have to die to complete the quest? What do we do then?”

“We turn around and we go the fuck home,” Eliot said immediately, alarmed. “And we try to find a different way to help Arielle, if we can. Do you hear yourself, here? Is this a - are we dealing with - ” Eliot swallowed back against a lump in his throat. “I’m trying not to overreact, Q, but the way you’re talking is seriously freaking me out.”

Quentin stopped walking so abruptly that Eliot was still mid-stride when he felt the pull on his hand. He spun, turning to face him, almost afraid of what he would see.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin said, biting down on his lip. “That’s not what’s going on right now. I swear.”

Eliot searched his face. It was mid-afternoon, but down in the dimness of the forest it was always annoyingly hard to see detail. Still, after a moment, the tension in Eliot’s shoulders eased. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. You feel guilty, and fucked up, and you’re worried about Arielle. But you’re not in danger, right?”

“No, I’m not in danger,” Quentin said, solemn. His eyes were wide and open and truthful. He took a step closer to Eliot, bringing a hand up to cup his jaw. “I’m good. And if I wasn’t, I’d tell you.”

“Yeah, I know that. Sorry.”

Quentin just shook his head, dismissing the apology. He looked up at Eliot for a moment, a soft smile on his face, before tilting up to kiss him, firm and decisive. “I really don’t know if we’re going to succeed,” he said, solemn. “But Arielle’s worth a long-shot, right?”

“Absolutely,” Eliot said. He wanted to kiss Q again, in fact, wanted to do a hell of a lot more than kiss him. It seemed his body was starting to remember how to be something other than a heap of suffering. But he was pretty sure Quentin wouldn’t let him get away with it, seeing as he was still in coddling mode. Still, he couldn’t quite stop himself from sliding their lips together again, sinking into the warmth of Quentin. It was a good reminder, of what were to each other, of what they could be. It wasn’t always suffering and worrying and anxiety and guilt. It wasn’t always the deep ache of missing their son and his mother and their home. Sometimes it was just this, lips sealed together, hands carding through hair, the press of a body even through layers of clothes, the heat of breath skidding across skin.

Quentin broke the kiss first, sighing and ducking his head under Eliot’s chin for a moment. Then he stepped back, a weak chuckle on his lips as he straightened his posture. “Okay. What are we doing standing around here? We’ve got places to be.”

Eliot snorted, rolled his eyes, and tangled their fingers together, pulling Quentin forward down the path. And if they still went a little slower than usual for the next few days, Eliot decided maybe he could let it go.

* * *

For all that the quest had brought them into contact with some scary situations and less-than-helpful creatures, Eliot wasn’t feeling too worried about the phoenix. After all, the eagle and owl parts of their mission for the feathers had gone... smoothly, relatively speaking. If things kept on in the same vein, then the phoenix would probably be infuriatingly unclear, magisterial, and convoluted, but not actually physically dangerous.

They probably should have seen it coming, honestly. When did things ever follow a pattern? When did things ever fucking go their way?

They found the phoenix’s last known location without any trouble at all, following Bella’s map through the woods, identifying landmarks and continuing on with more and more speed and energy as they got closer. Q was making lists out loud again, kept chanting the remaining steps between them and the end of their quest. It was endearing, and it was also a relief to finally have some of Quentin’s attention turned towards other things. Eliot was still worn down, still got tired more quickly as they trekked their way to their destination. But for the most part, he felt okay, and he was happy to see that Q was starting to believe that.

In fact, Quentin spared him hardly more than a quick once-over, and actually accepted it when Eliot said he felt just fine, before parting a thicket of branches and walking forward to the spot they were supposed to find the phoenix.

The trees in Fillory looked so much like the ones on Earth that sometimes Eliot, despite his decade of life on this plane of existence, still sometimes found the presence of otherworldly features disconcerting. He’d gotten used to talking animals of course, and some of the plants and flowers looked unlike anything you could find on Earth. But a talking bear, or even a giant bird, was quite different from the sight that greeted them as they stepped away from the tangle of branches, into a wide, dry expanse of open ground.

It was almost perfectly circular, the light of a late afternoon spilling forward form the sky, without the oppressive shield of tall trees to block out the sun. The light was almost startling in this context, as was the complete lack of flora on the dirt under their feet. It didn’t look like a natural clearing, it looked almost like…

“An arena,” Quentin said, spinning in a slow circle.

“Or a gladiatorial ring,” Eliot said, suddenly wary. He reached a hand out for Q, needing him close.

“Okay, so… where’s the bird - ” Quentin started, and then gasped, stumbling backwards and directly into Eliot, who caught him with a hand around his waist by instinct. Also by instinct, he raised his head to follow Quentin’s line of sight.

“Oh, _ shit_.”

The phoenix was there, wheeling down from the sky. And unlike Arnold’s earlier drop-by, Eliot didn’t think this was a friendly descent. Quentin was pushing against him, making them both half-stumble, half-run out of the line of fire. The phoenix didn’t appear to be changing trajectory, just continued its rapid wheeling before landing with a sinister skritch of its sharp talons in the dirt.

“You have come for a feather,” it said, in a voice that boomed deep and sonorous and genderless. “I will not surrender it easily.”

“Um, listen, if we could just talk - ” Quentin started, and the phoenix opened its beak and _ screeched_, an unholy sound that sounded nothing like the music these birds were sometimes said to make in folklore.

And after that, it was pretty much just chaos. Something in Eliot snapped into a new mode, a protective, _ violent _ mode, at the sight of the large bird, plumage bright in the dying sunlight, flapping its large wings in their direction. “Q, get behind me,” Eliot said, another instinct, even though he knew what the answer would be.

“Knock it off,” Quentin bit out predictably, and his hands came up in front of him, a defensive posture from which to cast battle magic. The phoenix’s wings flapped a few more times, and it lifted off of the ground, wheeling around to approach them from the other side of the clearing.

The bird’s eyes were piercing with fury, a fiery orange glow that was accented by the orange and red in its feathers. Eliot had time to notice this, before the phoenix made its first real attack, letting out another unholy screech and swooping forward, swiping at them both with one broad wing. Eliot was knocked sideways but the wing had only clipped him - he stumbled but kept his footing, throwing up a wall of protective energy between Quentin and the phoenix as soon as he could regain balance.

The shove had separated him from Q, and he took a few lunging steps back in Quentin’s direction as the bird darted forward, its beak snapping. Quentin threw out a shield of his own, and the bird wheeled away to avoid it.

“We don’t want to hurt you!” Quentin called out. Eliot could have told him it was useless, but he understood the impulse. He wasn’t in the mood to commit murder today, and he wasn’t even sure if he and Quentin _ could _ hurt this thing, magic or no magic.

“Q, maybe we should re-evaluate,” Eliot called out, reaching his side and grabbing his elbow. “That thing is - _ hey_!” The phoenix was _ fast_, way faster than should have been possible, given its size. This time it ran straight at them, forcing them to scatter, and Eliot found himself running around the perimeter of the clearing, trying to double around their combatant so he could find his way back to Quentin.

The bird wheeled around, and came straight towards Q, its claws outstretched. Quentin shot out another protective shield, but the phoenix was ready for it this time, ducking low under Quentin’s blast of concentrated power. Eliot watched, heart in his throat, as the bird’s talons made purchase on Quentin’s arm, just as Q spun his hands up and around and used the force to propel himself backwards, out of the bird’s direct line. He wasn’t quite fast enough, though, and Eliot’s stomach lurched at the spray of red visible in the air as Quentin stumbled backwards, tripping over his own feet and barely keeping upright.

Quentin let out a yelp of pain at the same time as Eliot let out his own cry of outrage, his hands coming up in front of him before he'd decided what he was going to do. The phoenix was pushed back in the air by the force of Eliot's magic, nearly toppling out of the sky as it wheeled backwards, flipping awkwardly into the air. Fucking _ good _.

"_ Q _ \- "

"Just clawed me a little," Quentin gasped. "I'm good, I'm good - "

"Fucking _ fuck_," Eliot said, his heart still in his throat, as the phoenix righted itself in the air and came back at them. He fought the instinct to throw himself in front of Quentin, keeping his hands up and his focus sharp as the bird came around for another pass. "I don't want to kill this thing."

"It's looking like we might not have a choice," Quentin said, throwing his hands up and around and erecting a shield just as one of the talons swept down again. There was a screech as the bird hit against the shield, and Eliot winced at the sound, determinedly looking away from the stain of red on Quentin's shirtsleeve. Instead he pressed the advantage, using the phoenix's distraction to whip out another strand of magical energy, a combination of battle magic with his own telekinetic force. The phoenix was buffeted backwards again but was barely deterred - it came straight back down, towards Eliot this time.

He tried to duck its talons but he'd misjudged. The bird turned, still surprisingly graceful and swift for a creature so large, and battered into him, his wing hitting directly into Eliot's torso. He felt all of the air in his body leave him in a single gust as he toppled backwards.

Quentin let out a yell, incoherent and terrified, and Eliot tried to get the air back inside of him so he could tell him he was okay. If he _ was _okay - he felt like one giant bruise, and was slightly worried he may have cracked a rib.

"El," Quentin said, and the phoenix was pushed back again. Quentin's eyes were blazing, his hands moving in a flurry.

"I will kill him, young quester," the phoenix said, its voice booming again in the clearing. "You know I possess the capacity."

"You touch him and you're _ dead_," Quentin snarled, and Eliot struggled to his feet, fear warring with awe at Quentin's bravery. Whatever he was doing with his magic was powerful - he'd created a shield between both of them and the phoenix, so that even as it flapped its wings and charged forward, the magical signature blasting out of Quentin's hands was pushing it continuously backwards, stopping its forward progress.

"I'm - _ fine_," Eliot gasped out. "Don't fucking niffin out on me, Q, I'll never forgive you."

The unceasing movement of Quentin's hands faltered slightly at the word _ niffin_, and the shield broke, the phoenix crashing through where the barrier had just been with perhaps a bit too much force - it wasn't in control of its trajectory, but it was heading straight for Quentin, and that in and of itself was un-fucking-acceptable.

It happened, then, in the way that momentous things often do. In slow motion, and of a sudden, all at the same time. Eliot twisted his arms up and out, with one goal and one goal only - to get the giant dangerous bird away from Quentin's vulnerable body. And Quentin had done much the same, his fingers curling and twisting in on themselves as his elbows locked and his whole body bowed with the pressure of magical energy coursing through it. And -

The phoenix snapped. Its neck, its body, its chest cavity... Eliot wasn't quite sure. But something in it that had been alive and attacking and speaking suddenly went out, and it was falling with a loud thump onto the forest floor before Eliot could really wrap his mind around what they'd just done.

Because they'd killed it. They'd _ killed _ it. Everything had been happening so fast, they hadn’t even had a chance to try to talk to it, to offer payment, or a compromise, or...

Eliot was frozen to the spot, horrified at the bird’s suddenly sightless wide eyes, but Quentin was already in motion - he was rushing across the clearing towards the clearly dead bird, and for a moment Eliot wondered why - there was clearly nothing they could do. But then he remembered - the feather. The whole reason they'd come here. He was still staring in somewhat uncomprehending shock at the giant corpse, when, without warning, it burst into flame.

"Shit," Quentin cried out, and, instead of running away from the sudden explosion of heat, he was still moving towards it.

"Quentin, what the _ fuck_," Eliot screamed, running forward too. He grabbed at Quentin's arm, yanking him backwards. The heat was unbearable. He could feel it crackling along his skin, singing the hair on his arms.

"The feather," Quentin said, straining against Eliot's grasp. "El, we need - " but another burst of flame shot up, enveloping the corpse and bringing with it a blast of scorching air. Quentin fell backwards from the pressure, and Eliot scrambled to keep him in his arms, falling back away from the plumes of smoke. "_ No_," Quentin screamed, twisting in Eliot's arms and trying to crawl back towards the fire.

"Q, we need to run," Eliot said, hoarse, as loud as he could manage against Quentin's ear. There was something about this that was so heartbreakingly familiar - he remembered holding a grievously injured Quentin back from Alice's still body, speaking uselessly to a man insensible with grief and regret. "Q, please - "

"We failed," Quentin said, his voice so quiet that Eliot almost didn't hear him over the roar of flames. The heat was becoming extremely painful. He could smell the scent of charred flesh. "We failed, we - " and then Quentin gasped, his words choked off in his throat. Eliot, whose eyes had been squeezed shut against the bright glare of flame, opened them again with effort, and saw that the flames, which were shooting straight up in the clearing, had started to - float. What the fuck.

"Q, if the trees catch on fire we're in serious trouble," Eliot said.

"No, it's - " Quentin said, waving an arm up at the twisting and twitching mess of flames. As each tendril of fire lifted itself up and off of where the phoenix had once been, it began to fade away, like a cloud dispersing in wind. The roar of the flame had started to die down, and the heat itself was becoming less painful.

"What the hell is happening right now?" Eliot asked, stunned.

"I have no fucking clue," Quentin said, turning to look over his shoulder at Eliot, blinking against the smoke. "I mean, it’s a phoenix, so - magic fire, maybe?"

Maybe he should have put that together already, but in the shock of being attacked and then of killing a giant majestic creature of myth, he’d sort of forgotten what the phoenix was famous for in the first place.

Within minutes the flame was gone, leaving only a smoldering pile of ashes where the corpse of their adversary had once lain. And - "Quentin," Eliot said, “_look _.” Sitting atop the pile of ashes was a single feather, a beautiful blend of reds, oranges, and yellows, perfect in proportion and bright with life.

“Oh my God,” Quentin said, his voice rough from panic and relief in equal measure. He scrambled forward towards the feather and Eliot let him, flinching slightly as Q’s hand reached forward for the feather, half-convinced it was going to burst into flames again. “Oh my God, but - but how?”

Eliot didn’t have an answer for him, just stared dumbfounded at the feather that Quentin was holding carefully in his hands. “Let’s get it in the jar.”

And sure enough - the blue glow suffused the jar as soon as they had closed it and Quentin had twisted his fingers around in a quick tut. The phoenix feather was bright and vibrant alongside the more natural colors of Arnold’s and the owl’s.

Eliot tore his eyes away from the jar and down to the sizable pile of ash, just in time to see something small and wrinkled nudge its way out of the ashes. “Q,” he said, brushing a hand along Quentin’s arm to get his attention.

For a moment they both stared at the baby phoenix, blinking up at them from the ash. The phoenix they’d just killed, to protect one another. And then Quentin cleared his throat, crouching down to get closer to the bird. “Um. Thank you?”

Eliot let out an involuntary laugh, charmed as always by Quentin’s unbelievable awkwardness. Then again, was there a _ not _ awkward way to behave in these circumstances?

The wrinkled bird just blinked at Quentin, twitched its head in what might have been a nod, and then scooted itself around to turn its back on them.

It was a clear signal of dismissal. Eliot felt unaccountably rude, like murdering a giant sentient bird and then watching it come back to life was somehow the equivalent of a mild yet embarrassing questing faux pas. But there didn’t seem to be much else to do - he cleared his throat and placed a hand against Q’s lower back, steering him around so they could exit the clearing, leaving the smoldering remains of the day’s work behind them.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

It took a while, on their journey away from the phoenix’s clearing, for Quentin to realize he was still clutching the jar in his hands. When he stopped to put it away in his pack, Eliot stopped walking too, glancing down at him, and suddenly going stock still. “Oh my God,” he said, and suddenly Eliot’s hands were on him, gentle against his shoulders.

“What?”

"Your arm," Eliot said, sucking in air in a pained gasp. "Q, your _ arm _ \- God, let me see - "

"It's just a scratch," Quentin said, soothing, but he held the arm in question up for Eliot's examination, wincing as Eliot pulled the bloodstained fabric away from the slash.

“I forgot,” Eliot said, grimacing. “Here, we should get you cleaned up, get a bandage on that.”

“It’s really okay.”

“Humor me. Besides, we get to take a break, we just got another ingredient.”

Quentin let out a laugh as Eliot steered him off of the path to find a comfortable place to sit. “God, El, do you think we’re just going to trade off being worried about each other for the rest of our lives?”

Eliot snorted, but his eyes were grim as he guided Quentin to sit against the trunk of a tree, crouching down to help him get his shirt off so he could free the injured arm. “Trade off? I’m never not worrying about you, Quentin. I’m pretty sure that’s what love is.”

“Are your ribs okay? You went down hard,” Quentin said, even as Eliot traced a tut against Quentin’s arm that would more or less disinfect the wound. Neither of them were healers, and Quentin knew Eliot wouldn’t dare try anything more complicated than that, but cleaning up was something they could both manage.

“See what I mean, about the worrying?” Eliot said, winking at Quentin, who rolled his eyes back. “Yeah, I’m okay. Nothing cracked, I’m breathing fine. Just knocked the wind out of me.”

“We just killed someone,” Quentin said. He felt like maybe he was in shock a little bit. The events of the past hour had taken on an unreal quality.

“Did we, though? I mean, if anything, we… de-aged someone.”

“Were we supposed to do that?” Quentin asked. This, he realized even as he said it, was the thing that had actually been bothering him. “I mean, we got the feather, right? Was there seriously no other way of doing that than through violence? _ Ow_.”

“Sorry,” Eliot said, sounding distracted, as he straightened Quentin’s arm and finished washing the blood off from around the wound. “Hold still.”

The arm really wasn’t that bad, and Eliot had clearly realized it too, because he kept his coddling to a minimum, wrapping the arm in a strip of clean cloth and then helping Quentin back to his feet. He didn’t even protest when Quentin insisted on helping set up camp for the night.

And once they were settled in front of a fire, sitting up against a tree together, Quentin repeated the question that had been whirring through his brain since the second he’d seen the feather, improbable and perfect, sitting atop the pile of ash. “Were we supposed to kill the phoenix? Was that the test?”

Eliot was silent for so long that Quentin nearly repeated the question. But eventually, Eliot sighed, twisting his head to drop a kiss on Quentin’s forehead.

"We did the right thing," Eliot said, "using the water to save me."

Quentin tensed, startled, and then tried to let out a laugh at the apparent non sequitur. The sound came out more like a sob, a mixture of relief, the memory of desolation, and incredulity. "No shit, El."

"No, I mean - " Eliot bit back on the words for a moment, thunking his head against the tree trunk as he thought through whatever it was he was trying to say. "I mean," he repeated, taking a deep breath, "that using the torrent water was the right thing for the quest, not just the right thing for you and me."

Quentin looked over at him, his eyebrows raised in curiosity. "Okay... say more. What do you mean?"

"Do you get the sense that the quest is... rewarding us for loyalty?"

"I don't know. I mean, what does that even mean? Loyalty to each other? To Ari?"

"Both. Think about it, Q - the owl suggested that we accept separation as a sacrifice. We said no. We still got the feather. The phoenix made us choose between killing it and losing one another. We killed it. We still got the feather. Even Arnold - he gave us his feather right after he'd reunited us. If you'd been - um." Eliot stopped talking abruptly, and Quentin’s heart clenched in sympathy. He squirmed an inch closer, resting his head against Eliot’s shoulder, and Eliot continued. "If you'd been dead, Q, I wouldn't have kept going."

"El - "

"I would have turned around and gone home to Teddy," Eliot said. "I would have wanted to die, but I would have - it would have made me give up on the quest. I couldn't have risked myself if I was our son's last living parent."

"Ari's not - "

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah," Quentin said, troubled. "Yeah, I do. So you're saying that we're supposed to be selfish? For the quest?"

"I don't know. It just feels like - too easy somehow."

"You have an interesting definition of easy," Quentin said, amused strain in his voice. He reached out and grabbed Eliot's hand, twisting their fingers together, smiling as Eliot let out a small sigh of contentment and slumped more of his weight into Quentin’s side.

"I don't mean easy, exactly," Eliot said. "I miss Teddy like a fucking limb, Q. Every second of every day. And we've both been on the verge of dying at least once. But we haven't been asked to give up anything. Nothing that we couldn't survive."

The phantom of Margo and Julia and Fen and Alice was suddenly there with them in the campsite, the thought a shared and near-tangible thing between them. But they weren’t talking about that right now.

"So by that logic," Quentin said, still frowning as he pushed past the thought, "the Watcher at the torrent was setting us up. I was protected from the illness by entering the river, and you weren't, but we had the water we needed to save you. If I'd chosen to let you die, in order to keep the ingredient uncontaminated..."

"You couldn't have killed that phoenix by yourself," Eliot finished. "Just as I couldn't have found the owl and made that sacrifice without you there to help me with that decision. We need each other to finish this thing."

"It's an optimistic thought, coming from you," Quentin said.

"I'm the King of Optimism, darling," Eliot said, sniffing regally.

"Anyway, it doesn't really matter," Quentin said. "I would have used the water to save you even if we couldn't have found a possible workaround."

"I know," Eliot said. "It makes me feel guilty as shit, but I know."

“I want to believe you,” Quentin said finally, nuzzling his face into Eliot’s shoulder. His arm was throbbing just a bit, but for the most part he felt at peace, at least physically. It was so lovely to have Eliot beside him like this, to have up sitting upright and talking, to know he was going to keep breathing for the foreseeable future. The brief time he’d spent waiting for him to die had done something to Quentin, scarred him in some deep, internal, inescapable way. “I want to believe that at the end of this, we get to take Arielle home with us, and that things will be okay again.”

“They will be,” Eliot said, so soft that Quentin felt the words more than he heard them. “Things will never be the same, Q, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be okay.”

And as the last of the dying light filtered through the branches above them, Quentin sat staring at the fire, curled in comfort around Eliot, and tried his best to let his brain go quiet.


	18. Chapter Eighteen - In Which Quentin Encounters a Familiar Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some discussion/content surrounding Quentin's mental health, and also features a panic attack. If you want a more detailed warning, please see note at the end for spoilers.

**QUENTIN**

Eliot had finally convinced Quentin that he was feeling up to resuming a more rigorous pace, which meant that they were set to reach the supposed location of their final ingredient in just a day’s travel. Bella’s map, which Quentin continued to study despite having memorized it long ago, showed the location as a small cottage deep in the woods. It was technically further away from Whitespire than the phoenix’s location had been, involving the slightest of detours, but they were closing in on their final destination all the same.

His unease had faded slightly after a night’s rest, and the familiar comfort of trekking through the woods with Eliot by his side. He thought idly of old routines, of waking up on lazy mornings and starting mosaic patterns before midday, of how those routines had shifted with the arrival of Teddy. And now this, the routine of their quest. It wasn’t an adventure like the ones the Chatwins had undergone in Fillory. It was both more and less than anything described in the Plover books. For one thing, Fillory didn’t feel like a fantastical dream to Quentin anymore. It was his home, the place he had officially decided he would grow old. He wasn’t questing for glory. He wasn’t even questing in order to propel his life into some new exciting stage. He was questing for the status quo. Which was about the Quentin Coldwater-iest thing he could possibly imagine.

He smiled to himself, about to share this observation with Eliot, when Eliot spoke first, his own train of thought clearly somewhere quite different.

“Hey, when you saw Arielle, what was she like?”

Quentin frowned, studying Eliot’s face for a hint of his mood. “What?”

“You know - when she stopped by? What was it like? I mean - was it like when Julia was without her shade?”

“I - I mean, I told you what she said, the way she was acting…”

“I was just thinking that we’ve strategized a lot about how to get into the castle and all that, but assuming we find her soul trapped in a cage or whatever, and this all works out, what’s it going to be like for _ her_? Will she… remember what she’s been doing?”

The tone of Eliot’s voice was contemplative and impartial. He was clearly in planning mode, having skipped ahead to the end of their quest, his mind already on the aftermath.

“Well,” Quentin said, dubious, “I guess I don’t know for sure, but I get the sense from what we’ve heard from Rita that she’ll remember everything just fine, right? Like… to her, everything she’s doing right now seems totally rational. It’s kind of like being shadeless, but…”

“But it’s different,” Eliot cut in. “Because someone else is controlling her, someone else has captured the part of her that has empathy.”

“You know you’re planning for stuff we might not even get to,” Quentin said, even as his stomach twisted sour at his own pessimism. “I’m a little more focused on getting the hearthfire, getting into Whitespire, finding the cage, breaking the spell…”

“Yes, yes,” Eliot said, waving a hand in front of him, like all of those things were bound to be easily dispatched. “I guess I just want to know what we’re up against here. I want to be prepared to help her.”

“And Taseer, maybe,” Quentin said. “Depending.”

“Yeah, depending,” Eliot said darkly. “That’s the other weird thing about this, not knowing if… I mean, I want to kill the guy if he did this to her, but I want to rescue him if he didn’t.”

“I resent him so much because he’s the only one I know, you know?” Quentin said. “If Toramond did this, or - or - some third party we haven’t even considered, then… I don’t know them. I don’t know anything about them. If Taseer did this, it’s fucking personal.”

“Arielle’s a good judge of character,” Eliot said. “And she trusted him.”

“Either way,” Quentin said, contemplative, “I suppose it’s good to think ahead. She’s going to need our support when this is all over.”

“I want to do right by her. I’m not sure I’ve always been the best at being there for people when they need me.”

Quentin actually stopped walking for a moment, looking up at Eliot and then hurrying to match his stride as Eliot continued his pace through the woods. “What are you talking about? El, you’re better at taking care of people than anyone I know.”

“I haven’t always done right by _ you_,” Eliot said, his mouth turned down into a slight frown.

“That’s emphatically untrue.”

“You had to teach me how to look after you, when you’re depressed.”

“What, you expected to just magically know how? Come on, El. You’ve got like - endless reserves of patience with me, I honestly have no idea how you put up with my moods the way you do. We’re just lucky I haven’t become a fall-down disaster on this quest yet. God knows how the hell we’d cope.”

Eliot didn’t respond to that, just continued to walk, his eyes on the ground so as to avoid tripping on the uneven path. There was something to the set of his shoulders that gave Quentin pause.

“Do you have something to say?” Quentin prompted, eyebrows raised even though he knew Eliot couldn’t see them.

“I - hm. I don’t know. I just. You’d tell me if you were struggling?”

“We’ve been over this.” Quentin tried to keep all notes of impatience out of his voice, but the truth was he really didn’t know where any of this was coming from. He’d always been honest with Eliot about how he was feeling. Most of the time, he could sense a shift in the wind before things got really bad, and Eliot had some warning. They knew his likely triggers, and Eliot knew the best ways of helping him weather the storm. They’d become master communicators over the years.

“Yeah, we have, but we never talked about your depression in the context of going on an epic best friend-saving quest together. Things get bad for you when you have to deal with change.”

“I hear you,” Quentin said, glancing down at the map as they continued to walk. He grabbed at Eliot’s elbow, steering them slightly to the left as they stepped further away from the largest of the forest’s footpaths. Distracted by the conversation, Quentin hadn’t noticed that they’d veered slightly too far to the east. “I really do. And I swear I’m not giving you the brush-off. It’s just - I think we’re almost there, El. Can we pick this up after we get the fire?”

Quentin didn’t have to see Eliot’s face to know he was less than pleased, but he let it go, tangling their fingers together as they continued their trek, the conversation turning to less fraught topics.

As the day faded to evening, Quentin continued to study Bella’s map, his brow furrowed as they went deeper into the forest, off of the main footpaths and into more tangled greenery. The light that filtered through the treetops high above was growing dimmer. It was nearly nightfall, and he wondered if they should stop. But he felt restless. He wanted to keep going - now that they were only one ingredient away, the idea of success felt tangible in a way it hadn't yet. Eliot’s worries, about him, about Arielle, had made him uneasy, and even more eager for a real sign of progress.

And there was something else that was setting him off his footing. As Quentin looked around at the surrounding forest, he was starting to get the strange idea that he'd been here before. Frowning, he looked down at the map again. Had they wandered in circles? Were they trapped? But no - this was right, it had to be. He could hear the river in the far distance, a sound you almost wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know what to listen for. They were definitely moving west, and that meant...

"Q?"

"Sorry," Quentin said, shaking his head. "Deja vu or something."

Eliot put a hand on the back of his neck, his thumb stroking lightly at the skin under Quentin's hair. "You look pale."

"I'm just - there's something so familiar - "

And then they crested a very small hill, and started down the other side of it, and Quentin froze. In front of him, nestled among the trees, was a small cottage. His heart began to pound very, very hard in his chest and he focused on keeping his breathing even. He'd definitely been here before.

"Is this it?" Eliot whispered next to him, putting an arm around Quentin's shoulders. "Holy shit, Q, this _has _to be it. Very Hansel and Gretel. I'm digging the sinister decor." There were large lollipops and other various candies lining the path to the cottage door, their colors muted in the evening light but still stark enough for Quentin to make out each and every one.

"Um. Yeah," Quentin said, his voice strangled. He was thinking very hard. The last time he’d seen this cottage, it had been far into the future - he could practically taste the panic of that moment, the way his breath had come out in anxious pants, the way he'd tripped and stumbled and then seen the cottage emerge through the darkness of the woods. He'd argued in increasing desperation for the witch's help, the image of his dead friends flashing against his eyelids - Alice, Margo, Eliot, Penny. All of them dead, everything _ Julia's _fault, the Beast gone, their one chance stolen from them just at the point of possible victory. So many emotions, so much to unpack. There hadn't been time to think. He'd needed to save them. He'd given his blood...

"Q. Quentin? Do you need to sit down? You look like you're about to fall over."

Quentin shook his head, gulping down against the anxious feeling. It didn't matter - that all happened in the future. Even if they walked into this cottage and found the same witch waiting for them, it's not like she would recognize Quentin. It's not like she'd have his blood.

"I'm okay," he said, looking up at Eliot and trying to smile.

"You're lying."

Quentin huffed out a breath of laughter, and then tilted forward, pressing his forehead into Eliot's chest for a moment, a steadying move. He took three deep breaths, in and out. He wanted to tell Eliot, but he was nervous about it, too - if Eliot suspected for even one second that going in to this cottage could be deadly for Quentin, he'd stop at nothing to protect him. He'd been agitated since Quentin's near miss during their escape from the dryads, and if he told him now, about the blood, about the witch, there was a very good chance he'd try to make Quentin wait for him outside. He pushed a squirming sense of guilt down deep inside of him, and spoke.

"It's just - it's not Hansel and Gretel," Quentin said, muffled into the front of Eliot's shirt. Eliot's arms had come up around him automatically. "So - um. In the Fillory books, this witch is bad news. Plover based her off of the witch from the fairy-tale, obviously. But in his version, she didn't eat little children, she just collected their blood to hold them hostage for later favors."

"Oh, shit," Eliot said. Quentin's stomach turned. He didn't lie to Eliot. It wasn't a thing he did. But the truth would lead to overprotective Eliot, and they didn't have time for that right now - not when they were so close to getting Arielle back. That was the only way that everything they’d been through would be worth it. "Okay, so whatever we do, we don't hand over our blood."

"If it's even the witch from the books," Quentin said, taking a step back away from Eliot. "This is before the Chatwin's time."

"I think it's best if we proceed with caution, regardless," Eliot said, nodding his head and tightening his jaw. "I suppose there's no real use in delaying?" He reached out a hand, and Quentin wordlessly gave him his pack. He placed it against a tree and Quentin did a quick series of tuts, camouflaging the pack against the bark and shrubbery around the trunk. There was no use walking all of their supplies, not to mention the other magical ingredients, straight into the witch's actual lair. When the pack had vanished from their natural sight, Quentin lifted his hand for Eliot to take, and the two approached the cabin door._ It's fine. This is the past. It's not going to be her. It couldn't be. And even if it was, it wouldn't matter_. The mantra wasn't helping. Quentin squeezed Eliot's hand, hard.

"Let's do this." Eliot had their final jar in hand, empty and transparent. With any luck, when they exited this cottage, it would be bright with flame, contained and glowing within. Their last ingredient. Everything that had come before had led them here. Failure was not an option.

As they approached the door, hand in hand, it swung open. 

She looked, all things considered, like an ordinary woman. Short curly brown hair, drab clothing, an odd makeup pallet causing a washed-out, dour appearance. She smiled at them, her eyes curious and polite.

“Good evening.”

It _ was _her.

Quentin’s heart stuttered to a halt and then started pounding double-time. It was _ her_. Same as the River Watcher. The same witch he’d met with years ago. Or - years in the future. His head hurt just thinking about it. He turned to look at Eliot, sure that if Eliot saw his face right now, he’d know. He’d see him and he’d _ know _ that something was wrong. But Eliot wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at the woman standing in the doorway.

“Good evening,” he said, smooth as silk. He smiled, pulling out the charm.

“Are you being chased?” the witch asked, her smile turning just the tiniest bit sardonic. “Usually people are being chased.”

Was that a coincidence? Was that - Quentin gulped and shook his head hard to dispel the memories of his last conversation with this woman. A conversation that hadn’t happened yet. He had to get it together.

Quentin risked another glance at Eliot. Did he recognize her? He tried to think back, to remember if Eliot had even seen the witch. Yes, he thought, at least briefly. He remembered running up, seeing that Alice and the others were miraculously alive… he’d turned back to the witch, asked for his blood back, and been denied. But there was no reason Eliot would connect a face seen for a few seconds in the darkness with this woman. Not unless Quentin gave him a sign. But if he did that, they’d be jeopardizing their chance of getting what they needed. _ Blood witch_, the list of ingredients had said. God, why hadn’t he thought it might be her?

Eliot was still maintaining polite conversation, oblivious to Quentin’s unraveling.

“No, we’re not being chased. But there is something we were hoping to ask you,” Eliot said. “We’ve come seeking - ”

“Fire from my hearth,” the witch interrupted, and despite himself, Quentin felt something inside of him relax, ever so slightly. So far, this was all going according to the pattern. She’d invite them in. She’d either attack them, or ask them to give something up, or - well, whatever it was, they’d do it, the same way they’d done everything else. And then they’d walk away, and Quentin would tell Eliot the truth, and he’d get some shit for it, but they’d be _ done_, and - 

“Can I offer you anything to drink?” the witch said, as she opened the door wide and ushered them inside. Eliot stepped forward immediately, seemingly unperturbed, but Quentin knew his confidence was a front. They had talked about this - the less desperate they seemed, the less likely it was that anyone would be able to take advantage.

“We’re actually in a bit of a hurry,” Eliot said, glancing behind him and nudging his head to gesture Quentin inside. Quentin followed, trying to ignore the sheen of sweat breaking out across his brow. “I’m sure you understand. We’ve been on this quest for quite a while.”

“Ah, of course. Well at the very least, I insist you take a seat so we can chat. I so rarely get visitors.”

The inside of the witch’s cottage looked bigger than should have been possible, given the tiny dimensions of the outside. It was… homey, somehow, actually quite similar in layout to the cottage that Quentin and Eliot had left behind with the mosaic. It caused a pang of unexpected homesickness to sweep through Quentin, but he ignored it, focusing his attention instead on the cheerful fire roaring away in the grate. Across the room was a kitchen table, atop which was the only ‘witchy’ implement in evidence, a small cauldron atop what appeared to be some sort of magical bunsen burner. It was burbling quietly, a sound that Quentin supposed he might have found comforting if not for the clear satanic implications. Then again, maybe he was being prejudiced, or something. There was no reason to think the worst.

They settled themselves down on a couch across from the witch, who perched herself with the greatest ease on a comfortable armchair and sat observing them for a moment, a bland smile on her face. Eliot set the jar carefully on the table between their respective seats, and it sat like a beacon of intent between them. The witch glanced at it, and smiled slightly. “As you’ve been on this quest for some time, as you say, you’ll know that unfortunately I cannot simply give you what you seek.”

“Of course,” Eliot said, after a pause. He seemed comfortable steering the conversation, but he did give Quentin a quizzical look, obviously curious as to why he’d remained silent. “We’d expect nothing less. Name your price.”

The witch looked at them both, her gaze sliding between them. Back and forth. Quentin shifted closer to Eliot on the couch, trying for inconspicuous. Finally the woman sighed, clapping her hands on her legs and standing up out of the chair, her gaze locked on the two of them.

"Are you sure you shouldn't like a cup of tea, dears?" she said, dialing up her unnaturally sweet grin. "It would be no trouble at all, I think I'll make one for myself, in fact."

"Oh, um. No thank you," Quentin said. He was proud of himself for the lack of waver in his voice, but Eliot turned his head sharply to study his face. Clearly, he heard at least a portion of the terror currently thrumming through Quentin’s veins.

“It’s considered rude, you know,” the woman said. “To decline a simple offer of hospitality.” She had made her way over to the counter top running along one side of the cottage, and she bent low over a row of cups and saucers, her hands fiddling in the contents of a drawer for a moment. “I should think you might have time for a quick visit. After all, the last time you were here, you were so very _ abrupt_.”

Quentin sucked in a gasp, frozen for an instant in disbelieving horror. Dimly, he heard Eliot’s voice from beside him, pure confusion. “What? What do you mean, last time?”

“El,” Quentin said. “El, we need to go - ”

“But you just got here,” the witch said, a false lilt of innocence in every word. “You might consider keeping an old woman company.”

She had turned around to face them now, holding a cup of tea. She calmly lifted it to her mouth, took a sip. Quentin stood up, his legs shaking.

“We just want the fire. What do we need to do to get it?”

“Q, what the fuck is she talking about?”

“Oh, dear,” the witch said. “Oh _ dear_, don’t tell me your delightfully handsome friend here doesn’t know about our history.”

“I - El, I know her, I met her - she - she has my - ”

It happened in slow motion, or at least that was how Quentin thought of it later on. The witch had set down her cup and saucer with a loud rattle against the kitchen table, and flipped a small glass vial out of her pocket, the red inside of it gleaming harsh and immediate in the light from the fire. She had produced it as if from nowhere, and Quentin wondered, hysteria bubbling up inside him, if this woman had somehow known they were coming. How could she have it - how could she _ know _ \- 

“_What_?” Eliot repeated, harsh. He grabbed hard at Quentin’s arm. “Q, what the fuck - ”

The witch lifted the vial, and Quentin knew it was his own blood inside of it. Somehow, it was calling to him from inside the glass, recognizing the body to which it belonged. It shouldn’t have been possible. He didn’t understand how any of this could be happening. And yet… in a flash, the woman spun around, and threw the vial inside of the burbling cauldron. The liquid inside hissed and flashed immediately bright white as the potion, whatever it was, started to glow strong enough to cast light on the witch’s face. Quentin had time to turn to Eliot, to see the look on his face of mingled shock and horror, and then he felt it as every muscle in his body locked down, a paralysis that hit just seconds before the first wave of pain.

“_Quentin_,” Eliot said, an almost stern exclamation of disbelief as Quentin’s legs buckled, his body crumpling to the ground. Eliot dropped with him, and dimly Quentin was aware of arms around him. But inside of him, it felt as if his blood had started to congeal in his veins, his heart working double time to try and force life through his body. It _ hurt_. It fucking hurt so fucking bad oh _ fuck _ \- 

“Q.” Eliot’s voice again, frantic in his ear. “_Q, _baby - ”

Quentin heard a scream echoing in his own ears, and realized it must be his own voice only when he heard Eliot mutter out a curse, and felt the bite of fingers in his arm. “What did you do to him? What the _ fuck _ are you _ doing _ to him?”

“I’m simply boiling the blood out of him.” The witch’s voice seemed to come from very far away. Quentin was too caught up in the heat screaming through his pores to feel indignant at the gleeful tone of her words. A less intense pain suddenly shocked its way through his ankle and he managed to peel his eyes open enough to see that his legs and arms were in spasm, knocking against the furniture. He had no control over his body anymore. He could barely feel it. He couldn’t feel Eliot anymore either, even though he was pretty sure he was still holding him tight.

“_Stop_!” Eliot said. “Stop, whatever you’re doing - what do you _ want _ from - I’ll do whatever you - _ Quentin, Jesus_.”

The screaming was louder, and Quentin expended every effort left in his dwindling bodily control to bite down hard against his own jaw, stopping the sound. Eliot sounded so anguished. It was almost as bad as the physical pain. Almost. He’d never felt more helpless in his entire life. There was a shift and then his back and head hit the floor, twitching along with the rest of him, the vibrations knocking his bones against themselves. Eliot’s presence was gone, towering above him now instead of curled around him on the floor.

"Let him go!" The voice was bright and sharp with panic, a piercing blade of meaning in a world turned to chaos. Quentin coughed and tried to breath through the pain, as he heard, through the blood hardening in his ears, the witch let out a shriek of indignation, followed by a thump.

Peeling his twitching eyes open again (when had they closed?), Quentin managed to focus his gaze enough to see that Eliot had the woman pinned to the wall by her throat using only his telekinesis. His hand was up in the air and the witch clearly couldn't breath, her feet kicking at the wall behind her as she dangled six inches off the ground. Eliot's eyes were flashing with pure fury. He was growling, his teeth clenched together, shoulders heaving as he fought for some measure of control.

"El," Quentin tried to say, but he couldn't make his throat form words. It came out as nothing more than another strangled moan of agony, and Quentin watched Eliot flinch at the sound of it, his teeth grinding together.

"_Now _, or you're dead," Eliot said to the witch, who was waving a hand in the air, gesturing pointedly to her invisibly crushed windpipe. Eliot's fingers flexed tighter in the air for a moment and then he eased them up, letting the woman fall gasping back to her feet. "Now. I mean it." There was a crackling red energy between Eliot's fingers, poised and ready to lash out if need be. The witched glowered at him and started hobbling over to the cauldron, her breathing harsh.

"It's your choice, quester," she said, smiling at Eliot. "The hearth-fire, or _ him_." She nodded her head down to Quentin, disdain in every word.

"Him," Eliot said, almost before she'd finished speaking. "Fucking _ obviously_, you _ monster_."

The world was starting to go hazy and indistinct in front of Quentin's face. The pain was also starting to die down, but seeing as the witch hadn't done anything new to the cauldron yet, he had the uncomfortable feeling that this wasn't a good thing. He could feel himself sinking in to the kind of unconsciousness that people don't generally wake from. Eliot had himself positioned in front of Quentin, a defensive stance that was utterly powerless against the kind of harm being done to him right now. Quentin wanted him to come closer, crouch down so he could see his face one last time, touch him -

"Q," Eliot said, strained and not looking at him, his face still turned towards the witch. "Please hold on for me."

He wanted to. He wanted to do that more than anything. He couldn't leave Eliot alone, here. He knew what it would do to him, and Eliot had fought so hard to survive for him. Quentin couldn't let him down now. He couldn’t let _ Teddy _ down, either. His eyes were flickering madly but he fought with every ounce of his strength to keep them open, as he felt every inch of skin on his body go numb and hard. He couldn't speak. He couldn't take a breath. He -

Something shifted. Quentin's vision had gone bright white at this point, but his hearing still seemed to be working, and he thought he heard the glug of liquid, a splash and a swirl, then the hiss of steam being released. The world burst back into existence with a bang, and Quentin pulled in a deep, greedy breath of air, oxygen zipping and zooming back to his brain and along every one of his nerve endings. For a moment the pain was blinding enough that he didn't even realize someone was touching him, but then he came back to himself enough to be aware of Eliot, and - 

" - hear me? Q, say something, _ oh God please _ \- "

"He's fine," a derisive voice said from behind him, as Quentin made the extraordinary effort of moving his own hand to tangle it into Eliot's shirt front, aching for touch. "I stopped the spell, you're being melodramatic."

"Q," Eliot said again, clearly sobbing. "Q, talk to me."

"El," he said, and this time his mouth formed the word correctly, more or less. Eliot froze and then gasped, curling lower over Quentin, where he had his upper body cradled in his lap.

"Oh, fuck," Eliot said. "Oh, _ fuck_, Quentin, I can't keep doing this - "

"Sorry," Quentin croaked. Eliot shook his head frantically, dislodging a couple of tears.

"No, no, it's okay. You're okay, Q, I've got you, you're okay." He was petting at Quentin's face, hands shaking wildly. "Are you in pain? Can you feel - "

"No, 'm okay," Quentin mumbled. His entire body was trembling so hard he honestly wouldn't have been able to say if he was hurt or not. "Um. What about - "

"You've earned it," a snide voice said, and Quentin heard the thunk of something being set down next to the two of them on the floor. It was the jar that Eliot and Quentin had brought in with them, but inside it was a curling twist of bright orange flame, magically contained within the glass, flickering and alive even without visible fuel. They’d done it. They’d succeeded, and it was all _ okay _ -

“Back the fuck off,” Eliot snarled, and Quentin blinked his eyes up to see the witch standing over them, a serene smile on her face. Eliot was clutching Quentin to his chest in a way that was equally protective and possessive, his face turned up to the witch with hatred lining every inch of his expression.

“It’s the quest,” Quentin said, although he wasn’t really sure why he was bothering. It’s not like this woman needed him to defend her from Eliot’s displaced wrath. “We got what we needed, we should just - ”

“Can you stand?” Eliot asked, strained. He still sounded furious, and Quentin wondered with a hint of unease if some of that fury was directed at _ him_.

They managed it, Quentin’s legs buckling slightly as Eliot held him firm against his side. “Do you need me to carry you?” Eliot said. Quentin was still shaking, but the last vestiges of pain had started to fade away, and the only lingering physical consequence was a bone-deep exhaustion. He felt like he could sleep for a year. He shook his head, looking away from the pale and pinched expression on Eliot’s face.

Jar in hand, they made their way out of the cottage, ignoring the witch’s breathy and friendly farewell. Eliot kept his arm around Quentin and went about collecting their pack with brutal efficiency, doing the magic one-handed and grabbing both his own bag and Quentin’s, swinging both over his shoulder so he could keep his other arm wrapped around Quentin. It was right around this time that Quentin realized he wasn’t the one who was still shaking.

“I can stand,” he said, quiet and hopefully reassuring.

Eliot squeezed him tighter against his side for a moment and then, with apparent great effort, he unclenched his fingers from around Quentin’s arm and took a step away, his eyes flickering uneasily over Quentin’s face and down his body, clearly ready to jump forward if he faltered.

“Let’s find a place to set up camp,” Quentin said. “I’m okay, Eliot.”

Eliot nodded, a jerky, sharp motion, and swallowed hard. He took a few steps back the way they had come. They’d need to retrace a couple of miles of their route and then turn south towards Whitespire. Quentin followed, and for a moment they walked in strained silence, Eliot white-knuckling the straps of both of their bags.

“Eliot,” Quentin said, and then had no idea what to say next. There was another long silence, and finally Eliot huffed out a hard, impatient breath, bringing his free hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"You should have told me you recognized that cabin," he said. He sounded calm, but Quentin wasn't fooled by the measured, low tone of his voice. He could see it in every line of Eliot's body, the tension roiling just beneath the surface.

"You wouldn't have wanted me to go in."

"No shit," Eliot spat, still not looking at him, still marching through the woods, searching for a likely resting spot for the night. He sped up abruptly, leaving Quentin to follow behind. Quentin's entire body was exhausted, down to the very marrow of his bones, but he didn't say anything, just forced himself to match Eliot's pace. Somewhere from the reserves of his energy, he readied himself for a fight.

"So I couldn't tell you - "

"I could have gone in alone."

"Like I would have let that happen," Quentin scoffed. "Listen to yourself."

Eliot pushed aside a hanging branch as he stormed past, and it nearly smacked Quentin in the face when it sprung back into place. "You walked us in to a trap when you knew she'd have a weapon to use against us. That was so goddamn _ stupid_, Quentin."

Eliot was right. He was right, but he also _ wasn't_, because Quentin hadn't known if the witch would really be in there or not. And anyway - "We were so close. We needed that fire, El, or else everything else that we've been through would have been for nothing."

And then Eliot swung around to face him, fists clenched at his sides.

"See, this is what I was _ fucking _ talking about," Eliot seethed, pinning Quentin with a furious glare. "You could have died back there, Q, you could have died a dozen times on this fucking quest and then what the fuck would have happened to me and Teddy?"

"You almost died too!" Quentin yelled back, indignant. "We knew the risks, we knew it wouldn't be easy, but it's Ari - "

"_Fuck _ Arielle!"

"Calm down," Quentin shot back. "You don't mean that."

"Oh, don't I?" Eliot said, his voice verging into hysterical as he tugged a hand hard through his hair. "_Don't I? _ Do you really think there's anything I wouldn't give up to protect you?"

"Eliot," Quentin said, fighting for his own composure. "Eliot, let's sit down, okay? Just sit down for a second and talk to me."

"No," Eliot said stubborn and stony. He started to turn away again, ready to keep marching through the dense forest.

"El," Quentin tried, gentler still. "El, please, I'm - I'm fucking exhausted, okay, I need you to - "

Eliot whirled around, every ounce of anger fallen away like it had never been there. He darted forward and wrapped his arms around Quentin, the skin of his face clammy where he had it buried in Quentin’s neck. “Quentin,” he said, horror apparent in the single word. He straightened up and took a deep breath. Quentin could feel his hands trembling where they were resting gentle against his back. Eliot ducked his head, kissing his forehead with fervent devotion. "I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry. We should - let's set up the campsite, you should be lying down. I can - we can talk about this later."

"We need to talk about it _ now _ \- " Quentin protested weakly, as Eliot steered him a little way further off the path.

“You need rest, okay?"

Eliot's voice still sounded brittle, but Quentin decided to let it go for the time being, allowing himself to be steered over to a promising looking clearing. They weren’t really far enough away from the witch’s cottage for Quentin’s comfort, but he knew better than to argue with Eliot right now. Eliot was all efficiency, smooth and quick as he set up their camp, casting their protective spells and lighting a fire with little more than a snap of his fingers. He even set out the four bottles, each now suffused with the blue light, the water’s jar just slightly dimmer than the other three. They had done it - they had actually -

"Q, come on," Eliot said. "Let's get you settled."

Eliot had gone from terrified anger to devoted coddler so quickly that it was giving Quentin whiplash. Before he knew it, he was inside of the tent, wrapped up in blankets and Eliot's arms, as Eliot dusted kisses over the back of his neck and shoulders. "I love you," Eliot said, like it made him angry. "You know how much I - "

"Yes," Quentin said. "But you can't always protect me from everything - "

"Doesn't mean I'm not going to try," Eliot said, pressing his forehead hard into the back of Quentin's neck. "Jesus Christ, you scared me so bad."

"I'm sorry," Quentin said. Eliot's arms were tight across his chest, caging him in. It didn’t matter. Quentin would never want to escape.

“Are you?” Eliot asked, a hint of ice creeping in to his voice.

“I’m sorry you were scared.”

“Fuck you,” Eliot said, with feeling. Quentin could feel moisture from Eliot’s tears on the back of his neck. He felt helpless and tender and protective. He suddenly wanted to cradle Eliot to his chest, kiss along his forehead and whisper soothing words into his hair, hold him until Eliot wasn’t scared anymore. But Eliot wasn’t letting him turn around in his arms, just kept gripping him almost tight enough to hurt.

"You scared me, Q, I was so scared," Eliot whispered, repeating the words into the back of his neck. "I just - watching you in pain like that - "

"I know. I'm sorry.” What else was he supposed to say? He wanted to be celebrating their victory, but there seemed to be little chance of that. It was only here, forced into enduring Eliot’s aggressive attempts to get him to rest, that Quentin realized how badly he had screwed up. The risk had been worth it, from his perspective. But not, it was clear, from Eliot’s.

"I didn't mean it, about Ari, Q - you know I love her, you know I want her back just as much as you do."

“I know that. And _ you _know that there are risks to what we’re doing out here, that I had to - ”

“You need to sleep,” Eliot interrupted. “I don’t want to yell at you right now, I need you to get some rest. Please.”

“You’re squeezing too tight,” Quentin said, and then winced when Eliot’s arms tightened harder for a split second, at the same time as he heard a blubbery sob in his ear.

“I can’t,” Eliot said, and Quentin wasn’t sure what he meant. Was pretty sure Eliot didn’t know either.

“I know,” he said anyway. “I know.”

It took a long while for Eliot’s grip to relax, for his breathing to stop hitching against the skin of Quentin’s back. His own shock was wearing off, and he could feel the beginnings of panic starting to take hold of the edges of his mind. But he was so tired. He was too tired to process it all right now, he just wanted to _ rest _. So instead of thinking about the fact that he’d almost died, he listened to the crackle of the fire that Eliot had kept burning outside the tent, and he counted Eliot’s breaths until he fell asleep.

* * *

When Quentin woke up, he wasn’t sure at first how long it had been. It felt like he’d been asleep for days, and also like he’d just closed his eyes. Eliot wasn’t sleeping, and Quentin had time to wonder if he’d managed to get any rest at all, before he realized that Eliot was grinding into him, his cock hot and heavy against the swell of his ass. His breathing was shallow and warm against the nape of Quentin’s neck, lips wet and unceasing as he pressed kisses into his skin.

“Eliot?”

“Q. Want you,” he said, rolling his hips forward. “Let me.”

“Yes,” Quentin said. The exhaustion he’d felt since the witch’s attack was still there, but it was buried under a sharp need that bloomed out from the center of him like it had been waiting for permission to emerge. He was hard too, and he wondered suddenly how long Eliot had been moving against him, working them both up, before he’d become aware of it.

One of Eliot’s hands snaked down and palmed him through his trousers, and Quentin groaned, shoving back against Eliot, reaching his own arm backwards to tug Eliot harder against him. Eliot’s hips stuttered and he let out a curse against him, and then he pulled away, just long enough to flip Quentin onto his back and crawl fully on top of him, licking immediately into his mouth.

_ Yes_. It appeared, to Quentin’s delight, that Eliot wasn’t looking to be careful with him. He was grinding their cocks together through the layers of clothing, insistent and fast, and his hands were gripped fierce in Quentin’s hair as he pressed forward, biting and suckling at Quentin’s lips. It was out of control so quickly, a shaky, unhinged side of Eliot that he rarely saw, that he worked to bring out whenever possible. He loved it when Eliot took from him, just pulled his own pleasure from Quentin’s body. It was the most empowering feeling in the world, knowing he was the thing Eliot wanted most, when he was incoherent with need and lust.

And then he started talking, his hands skimming rough under Quentin’s shirt, his lips still pressing hard against Quentin’s own, then trailing down to the line of his jaw. “I thought - I thought I was losing you - ”

“Never,” Quentin gasped, bowing his back and rolling his hips up to meet the pressure of Eliot on top of him. “You could never lose me, El, I - ”

“You have no idea,” Eliot was saying, and he bit hard against Quentin’s neck and then laved at the spot with his tongue, his breathing wild and harsh in the silence of the tent. A bubble of privacy, a place for just the two of them. Quentin felt feverish. He pushed Eliot’s shirt up but Eliot refused for a long moment to separate himself from Quentin enough to take the shirt all the way off. It stayed, bunched up under his arms, as Eliot went back to his mouth, moaning into the kiss. “You have no _ idea_,” he repeated, slurred and fervent. “None at all. What I would do for - how this feels - ”

“I know,” Quentin said, breath hitching, heart racing. He was so hard, but that was barely even the _ point_. It was just the touch of him, the weight of Eliot above him. The best and truest thing in the world. He kept tugging until Eliot sat up long enough to take off his own shirt. He tugged his pants down just far enough to free his cock. It slapped up against his stomach, huge and hard and already leaking.

"You're - you don’t. Q, you’re - ” Eliot stuttered, looking down at him like he couldn’t believe his own eyes. “You’re going to make me go grey." Something had snapped loose and furious within Eliot, and Quentin was helpless to stop it. He fell back down on top of Quentin, biting savagely at his bottom lip and then kept going, kissing frantically down Quentin's throat, tearing at his shirt as he went. "Jesus Christ, Quentin."

"I'm sorry," Quentin said, hands and body and soul shaking. "Ungh, _ fuck_, El - come on, I need to feel you, I want you to fuck me, I want you to - "

"I would have killed her," Eliot breathed, tugging Quentin's pants down with no ceremony, kneading at his ass and lowering his head to bite at one of his nipples. "I would have fucking _ killed _her, Q, if she'd - "

"I know, I know - now come on, El, _ now _\- "

Eliot slid down his body, swallowing Quentin's cock before he'd had time to register what was about to happen. He shouted, bowing his back and digging his hands hard into Eliot's shoulders. "Fuck! Eliot!"

Eliot gave him virtually no time to adjust. Keeping one hand pressed into Quentin's stomach to hold him to the ground, he twisted his other around in a series of familiar tuts and then pressed two fingers straight inside of him, scissoring them open with rough and singular purpose. He slurped and swallowed around Quentin's cock while swirling his fingers with unerring accuracy against his prostate, a confluence of sensations so intense and sharp it was rounding the corner from pleasure to pain. “I would have killed her,” Eliot repeated, when he pulled back. The blood was rushing so loudly in Quentin’s ears that he almost missed Eliot’s words. They were hoarse and nearly delirious as he pressed his lips again and again into the crease of Quentin’s thigh. “I’d kill anyone who hurt you - anyone who _ touches _ you, Q, you’re _ mine_, you’re - ”

"Oh, _ fuck_.” It should have been too much, too intense, but it was somehow exactly what Quentin needed, the adrenaline of near-death transforming into something sharper, aching with need. “Fuck me, _ fuck _me," Quentin said, out of his mind. With magic easing the prep, Eliot didn't have to wait, and within moments he was shoved deep inside of Quentin, bottoming out and folding his legs up, straining to get inside as deep as he could go. Quentin let out a sound that was nearly a scream, echoing in the caverns of his mind.

"Q," Eliot said, rough, "Q - God - Am I hurting you?" He pulled out slightly and then thrust back in, hard. He was setting a punishing rhythm already, his body moving in an animal, uncontrollable sort of way. But there was a strain in his voice, a worry, that Quentin rushed to dispel -

"No. God. I’ll fucking kill you if you stop."

Eliot tried to laugh but it sounded more like a sob, as he bent forward to kiss Quentin, the force of his thrusts hard enough that it was difficult to keep their lips connected. “I’m so _ mad _ at you,” Eliot said, right up against Quentin’s mouth. Quentin bucked up underneath him, writhing for for what he needed, and Eliot shuddered out something close to a sob, burying his face into Quentin’s neck as he continued to pound into him, his rhythm already deteriorating. “I’m so fucking _ angry _ , Q, how could you _ do this to me_.”

“El,” Quentin gasped out. He didn’t have an ounce of energy in him for arguing, or for apologizing, or for anything other than the physical zing of pleasure lighting up along every one of his nerve endings. He felt so good it was kind of unreal. “Yes, _ God_, don’t stop, I’m close - I’m - ”

Eliot groaned, loud and shameless, and snapped his hips even faster, changing the angle of his thrusts until Quentin found himself coming, his orgasm hitting him out of nowhere, pulling strangled, disbelieving noises out of his own throat. Eliot bit down on his neck _ hard_, the pulse of pain adding to the pleasure, and Quentin felt him come too, deep and tight inside of him.

For a moment the world spun above Quentin’s head, as he blinked his eyes open and tried to get them to focus on the tent’s canvas above him. Eliot was limp and trembling on top of him, and Quentin found the strength to move his arms, wrap them tight around his waist and squeeze, holding on until the world started to make sense again. His legs were still locked around Eliot’s waist, keeping him deep and tight inside.

“Are you okay?” Eliot asked, his voice tight. He shifted, making to pull out and away, but Quentin held him tight with all his limbs, a whimper building in his throat. “_ Q_, are you okay?”

“I’m okay, I’m - just don’t go. Stay, El.”

“God, you almost died,” Eliot said, and Quentin could feel his heartbeat, still way too fast, pressed into his own sternum. He turned his face into Quentin’s chest, grinding his nose into his breastbone, breath hot and gasping right over his heart. “I shouldn’t have - _ fuck_, I’m _ sorry_, tell me I didn’t hurt you.”

“You didn’t,” Quentin said, his voice gravelly like he’d been screaming. He thought, dimly, that maybe he had been. “It was what you needed - what we both needed. And I’m the one who’s sorry.” Reluctantly, he let his legs fall back down to the ground, but kept his arms tight around Eliot’s back.

Eliot groaned, shifting some of his weight so he slipped out of Quentin’s body. He didn’t go far, curling around Quentin instead of pressing into him. Quentin took a deep breath, already missing the full weight. For a long moment, they were both silent, and then Eliot spoke, a cold, dead tone in his voice that made the hairs on Quentin’s arms stand on end. “You do shit like that, and it makes me think you can’t possibly love me as much as I love you.”

“_What_?” Quentin said, startled and hurt. His hands clutched at Eliot’s skin, digging for possessive purchase. “What the fuck does that mean - ”

“I don’t think you have any _ concept _ of what you are to me, Q. You’d never be capable of hurting me like that if you knew.”

“Eliot, come on - ”

“No. If you die, you condemn me to - I don’t even want to think about what I’d become. Worse than an empty husk. I’d be poison, I’d be every bad part about myself, and none of the good. I need you to live. Q, I need you to _ outlive _ me. It’s imperative. I need you to live because it’ll hurt too much if you don’t, and I have a kid so I’m not allowed to pull a fucking Romeo, here. So just - live, okay? You don’t get to leave me. I know I sound possessive, and fucked up, and crazy. And I don’t _ care_, Quentin. Do you hear me? I don’t care.”

Quentin was crying, and he wasn’t sure of when he’d started. “You’re full of shit,” he said, rough and a bit angry himself, now. “You know it’s the same for me. You _ know _that.”

“Why did you lie to me?” Eliot asked. His voice was cold but his hands were warm and firm, holding him tight. “_ Why_, Quentin?”

“I didn’t know I was lying,” Quentin said, and then huffed out an impatient breath, squeezing Eliot harder to him. “I mean - how was I supposed to know the fucking _ blood witch _ was a _ time traveler _ or whatever.”

“_We’re _ time travelers,” Eliot pointed out, angry and incredulous. “It’s not as if it’s outside the realm of possibility, Quentin. Just answer the question!” Quentin turned to meet his eyes. Eliot was openly weeping through his anger, the tears spilling down across the bridge of his nose.

“Eliot, I - I don’t know how to go on if we fail at this. If we can’t bring her home with us.”

“I thought we’d sorted out our priorities, I thought we were on the same page about this,” Eliot said, just the barest hint of pleading in his voice now. “We keep going back and forth, we keep - we _ can’t _ keep risking this. We have to be our own top priority. I don’t know how this works any other way.”

“Teddy’s my top priority,” Quentin said, even though he knew what Eliot meant.

“You know what I mean,” Eliot bit out, impatient. He was still breathing hard, his heartbeat pounding against Quentin. “You’re supposed to _ trust _ me.”

“I do!” Quentin said. Neither of them had done anything about the sweat and come sticking to both of their skins. They were lying half-dressed atop the bedrolls, and Quentin could feel his own release cooling on his stomach, uncomfortable and sticky. He was still shaking, and he wasn’t sure how much of it was from what the witch had done to him, the comedown of fear and pain, and how much of it was from the sex. “I do trust you, Eliot. I didn’t - I wasn’t thinking about it like that.”

“You weren’t _ thinking _ at all,” Eliot said, his teeth gritted. His hands were skimming along the skin of Quentin’s back, down his arms, across his stomach. Eventually he did the clean-up spell, barely pausing as he continued to run his hands over Quentin’s body, like he was mapping it to be sure it was all still there. Rough, efficient touches that spoke of familiarity but not tenderness. “You were - you were - I don’t know, Q, you were fucking _ reckless_, you were throwing your life around like you don’t even _ want _ it - ” Eliot’s voice was cracking and wavering all over the place, the coldness to his tone vanishing under an onslaught of pain and terror.

“I’m not suicidal,” Quentin said, because that seemed to be the crux of what Eliot was getting at, and -

“Would you know if you were? What if you’re all fucked up, and I didn’t notice it, and you - you - I don’t get how you could do this to us, you _ betrayed _ \- ”

“Eliot, _ stop_,” Quentin said, aghast. “Jesus Christ, I’m _ not _ suicidal. I don’t have a death wish. I did not go in there thinking that was going to happen, it was _ not _ intentional. I swear to you.”

“Then _ why_?”

“You’re having a panic attack,” Quentin said, realizing this for the first time, like a shock to his heart. Eliot was breathing hard, too hard for it to be the comedown from sex. In fact - the sex may have been _ part _of the panic attack, which was more than a little bit fucked up, but there was time to think about that later. He tightened his arms around Eliot, biting his fingers into his back. “Eliot, I need you to breathe.”

“Don’t dodge the question,” Eliot gasped, crying in earnest. “Why do you keep trying to _ leave me_, Q?”

“Breathe,” Quentin repeated. “Here, come on, Eliot, just - just match my breaths. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”

It took a while, but eventually Quentin felt Eliot start to match him, his face pressed painfully into Quentin’s collarbone, his breathing pained but less unsteady. Quentin murmured comfort into his hair, smoothed his hands down his back. “You’re okay. We’re okay. We’re here, we’re okay.” Eliot clung to him and cried for a long time, but it felt cathartic, somehow, like at least some small part of his fear and rage was draining out of him with his tears. And Quentin was oddly comforted at being allowed to comfort, at the thought that his presence was helping.

Eventually Eliot’s breathing slowed further, nearly to the point of slumber, and Quentin relaxed, stilling the motion of his hands against his back. He turned his head and pressed a long soft kiss to Eliot’s temple and felt a ball of tension in Eliot’s chest suddenly unspool, his weight going entirely limp on top of Quentin.

“So,” Eliot whispered. “So that’s a panic attack, huh?

“Yeah.”

“That fucking sucked.”

“Yeah,” Quentin repeated, laughing even though nothing was funny.

There was a lot to say. Too much. It was choking him. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to make Eliot believe him. He wanted - 

“I want to go home,” he said, like a child. Plaintive. True. The truest true of everything.

“I know,” Eliot said, and he sighed, huffing deep into Quentin’s chest. Quentin sensed it when he drifted back to sleep, but it took him a long time to follow him down into slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: After Quentin lies to Eliot and ends up in danger because of it, Eliot has a panic attack, believing Quentin to possibly be suicidal. They both engage in some unhealthy coping mechanisms, including having somewhat rough sex while upset and angry.
> 
> Thank you all for reading and sticking along for the ride... see you all in 2020!


	19. Chapter Nineteen - In Which Eliot and Quentin Arrive at Whitespire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so, so much for your continued support! Happy beginning of 2020!

**ELIOT**

When Eliot woke up, his head was pounding, nearly as bad as it had been when he’d been sick. For a moment he didn’t remember where he was, just relaxed into the knowledge that Q was with him, curled tight and close. And then the events of the day before slammed into him, and he groaned, an annoying and unwelcome thrum of terror-laced adrenaline shooting through his veins.

He shifted, turning his head to press his nose against Quentin’s forehead. He breathed in deep a few times, seeking calm, and probed delicately at the muddled mess of feelings within him. He loved Quentin so fucking much. He wanted to throttle him. He was so relieved. He was so furious. He wanted to go home. He wanted Arielle.

That one was - actually sharper than the rest. Sharper than he expected. He really, _ really _ wanted Arielle. Because Ari knew Quentin better than anyone else alive other than himself. They were allies in knowing and loving him. If there was one person in the world to whom Eliot would be able to articulate the way he was feeling right now, it wasn’t Quentin himself. It was Arielle, someone else who had experience with caring so deeply for this man you could almost hate him for how much he seemed to hate _ himself_.

It was a confusing way to feel. Overwhelming. Eliot wanted to squeeze Quentin to him tight and never let him go, and he also wanted distance, space from him to process what had happened yesterday. And what could have happened, all because Quentin had chosen not to just _ tell _ him - 

“Hey.” Quentin’s voice was sleepy-soft and warm, and Eliot trembled slightly, wishing he had the capacity to push the rest of the messiness away so he could duck down and kiss him long and sweet and slow in the filtered light coming through the flaps of their tent. It was all he wanted, but he couldn’t. “How are you feeling?” Quentin continued, and when Eliot made himself look at him, he saw an expression of concern puckering his eyebrows, turning his lips down into a slight frown.

“I really don’t know how to answer that,” Eliot said, rolling away from Quentin and sitting upright. “I just - I don’t know, Q. I’m having a hard time with this.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, tiny and timid as a mouse. He shifted around in the mess of bedroll and blanket, “Yeah, I get that.”

“Do you?” Eliot asked. He was genuinely curious. The rational part of his brain, what little of it was left, knew that Quentin hadn’t _ known _ what was going to happen with the witch. Recklessness wasn’t good, but it wasn’t the same thing as intentionally endangering his own life. He just couldn’t quite make the rational part of himself override the rest.

“I’ve been trying to think of how to, like, explain myself,” Quentin said, staring down at his fingers. Eliot got up and started to pack up their camp, just for something to do. Quentin joined him, and they completed their normal morning routine on auto-pilot. Quentin was nervous and quiet, and Eliot hated it. But he didn’t have it in him to be reassuring right now.

“The thing is,” Quentin said. “I’m really sorry. Really, _ really _ sorry, Eliot. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of… I wasn’t _ expecting _ \- ”

“You didn’t tell me,” Eliot interrupts. “That’s the crux of this.”

“I didn’t tell you because you would have stopped me.”

“So you’re _ not _ sorry, then,” Eliot said, through gritted teeth. “You’re not sorry. You’d do it again.”

“_No_,” Quentin set his pack down on the ground and came up to Eliot, hands on his arms. “No, El. I think I just saw the finish line, and you’ve been really on edge about my safety, which, like, I _ get_, don’t get me wrong. I’m the same way. I just - what are the odds that the crazy creepy witch I met forever ago is also traveling through time?”

“I need to be able to trust that you’ll look after yourself,” Eliot said. “You didn’t trust that I’d let you put yourself in danger. Maybe you were right, but we’ll never know now, will we?”

“Eliot, you - ”

But Eliot wasn’t done. “And now I can’t trust that you’re going to put your own safety first. _That _ is what I’m struggling with, here, Q, do you not understand that?”

Quentin’s hands on his arms should have felt comforting. He was having to force himself to stay still and not pull away, but Quentin could read it anyway, in his body posture. He dropped his hands, sighing, some of the defiance draining out of him.

"You were right," Quentin said, "about the quest rewarding loyalty. The witch asked for you to pick between me and the hearth-fire, and you called her bluff."

Eliot looked at him, an eyebrow raised in disbelief. "I wasn't even thinking about the quest, Q. You know that, right?" There was that familiar spike and lurch of rage, bubbling up inside of him. He suppressed it, focusing on relief instead.

“Well,” Quentin said, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, I know that. I just meant - ”

“I know what you meant.”

“El,” Quentin said, his voice suddenly quiet and miserable again. “I hate this. You’re mad at me - I hate it, I - ”

“Quentin,” Eliot said, heartsore. “I’m not - I’m just _ shaken_, okay? And I’m not… _ not _ mad at you, baby. I wish I could turn it off, I wish I wasn’t, I just - I’m sorry.” 

“You shouldn’t be apologizing,” Quentin said. Then he paused, looking up at Eliot with an uncertain tilt to his head. “Will you let me kiss you?”

Eliot wasn’t actually sure, in that moment, if he wanted Quentin to touch him. But he thought about the look Quentin would get on his face if he said no, and nodded his head instead. Quentin took the tiniest step forward and tilted his head up, but then he stopped and looked up at Eliot, waiting. Eliot flickered his eyes closed, and leaned down to press his lips into Quentin’s, gentle.

He didn’t know how to kiss Quentin without meaning it, and just the warmth of him close and familiar melted some of the ice in Eliot’s veins. He teased at the seam of Quentin’s lips with his tongue, and Quentin opened to him, his body going practically limp in obvious relief. They stood there for a moment in the clearing where they’d just dismantled their campsite, kissing in a slow, syrupy way that didn’t have anywhere it needed to be, and then Quentin disconnected them, taking a step away.

“Are we okay?”

“We’re,” Eliot hesitated, cleared his throat. “We’re always okay. But this conversation isn’t over, Q. It’s on a pause.” Quentin frowned but nodded, seemingly content not to push the issue. “I love you,” Eliot said, because it was instinct, and because it always made Quentin happy to hear it.

“I love you too. So much,” Quentin said, and when they set off towards Whitespire, Eliot reached for Quentin’s hand and gripped it tight, letting everything that was complicated and bad fade as far into the background as he could manage.

They had a quest to finish.

* * *

Getting in to Castle Whitespire was actually very easy. It was a fully functioning court, despite the lack of High King. All they had to do was blend in with the peasants in the small village that had built itself around the castle, study the movement of palace guards and various staff and serving members, adjust their clothing with some inexpert-but-serviceable illusion magic, and slip in with some servants.

Unfortunately, that was the end of the easy part. There were plenty of sections of Castle Whitespire that were open to the general public - a grand reception hall where the consul might allow commoners to air their grievances, a large dining hall, even the throne room. But these places were crowded, and at any moment Arielle might wander through. They knew from Rodney Jr.’s trip that Arielle and Taseer had both been staying at the castle, which was why they had decided that they’d look here first, before heading to Taseer’s estate. But if Ari saw them before they managed to undo the spell that had her trapped, she’d raise the alarm and send them away.

As they stepped in to a grand chamber just off of the courtyard, Eliot felt Quentin press a quick hand against his elbow. He followed Quentin’s line of sight and saw a man dressed in regal garb, short in stature but with ramrod straight posture, coming out of an adjoining chamber, followed by a train of courtesans, including a woman who appeared to be a governess, steering a child only a few years older than Teddy out of the room.

“That’s got to be the consul,” Quentin whispered. “And his son, right?”

“Just think, that little kid is probably Tick Pickwick’s many times’ great grandfather.”

“I don’t see Ari,” Quentin said, scanning the crowd of finely dressed people as they dispersed, going back, no doubt, to their stuffy privileged lives. Eliot felt an odd lurch in his stomach as he realized that this had once been _ his _ stuffy and privileged life. Could have been Quentin’s, too, if so much hadn’t gone sideways.

“That’s good,” Eliot said back, keeping his voice low but trying not to appear like they were whispering. “It means we won’t be recognized.” They were forced to wait for a while, for the crowd around the consul to disperse as everyone went back to their tasks. As they did so, Eliot looked around him at the grand interior of Castle Whitespire.

The castle had a sheen to it, a newness that was putting Eliot ill at ease. This place was familiar to him, had once even been home, however briefly, but it was like looking at a familiar face in a fun house mirror. Recognizable, but off-putting in a number of small ways. The tapestries were shining with bright newness, some of the nooks and crannies that had been empty in his day had statues or suits of armor waiting in them. There was art on the wall that he didn't recognize, and blank spots where art should have been. Even the air felt different. He wondered, with a small pang of distress, if the faeries were around, watching them from their own world, invisible to human and animal eyes.

"Okay," Quentin said, clearing his throat as they decided it was safe to proceed. He was looking around him with darting eyes. "Okay, so far we've been in public areas, but now - "

"Yeah," Eliot said. "Things are about to get a lot trickier.” They exited the entrance chamber and proceeded down a broad hallway, walking with practiced purpose. If you pretended you had a right to be there, people would look right past you. “There's a stairway at the end of this hall, to the left, and the dungeons are down below, there's bound to be guards."

"If that's even where - "

"One step at a time, Q," Eliot said. But he understood Quentin's trepidation. They had planned, and planned, and planned, even before they had set off after the first ingredient. But even with all of their strategies and maps and practice, this final, most important part of the quest was the one in which they had the least confidence. There were so many assumptions that had to be made. The main one being, of course, that Arielle's soul was being kept at the castle in the first place, and that they would be able to find it.

But they'd mapped this out. Even without certainty, they'd already decided where to go. First up was the dungeons. Eliot squeezed Quentin's hand, hard, and they ducked around the corner, moving quickly but as quietly as they could towards the opposite end, where stairs would lean them down.

Only a few steps down the hall, however, a figure appeared out of an open door, a woman who looked like she might be a lady in waiting. She was turning in their direction, she'd see them at any second... Eliot was just grabbing at Quentin's arm to pull him back around the corner, when he saw a glint of concentration in Q's eyes, his hands moving in a blur around them. The woman walked directly by them, within a few feet, and turned the corner they themselves had just turned. She hadn't noticed them at all. Eliot looked at Quentin, eyes wide.

"Phosphoromancy, bitches," Quentin said, very quietly. "I'm not as good as Alice, but when we were at Brakebills South she showed me some things. God, that feels like a lifetime ago..."

"Damn, Q," Eliot whispered back. "I'm a little turned on right now."

"Save it for when we're not in mortal peril," Quentin suggested. Eliot felt the next quip on the tip of his tongue - _ hmmm, I wonder what not being in mortal peril is like, I've forgotten _ \- but Quentin was right, they really should be moving.

As they continued down the hall, Quentin moved his hands a few more times, adjusting the limits of the light-bending he'd erected around the both of them. They were effectively invisible now, although of course that didn't stop them from making noise. The guard waiting at the top of the stairs leading down into the lower level was a small man, tucked into the shadows enough that they were only a few feet away from him when they saw him. Quentin and Eliot looked at one another, silent communication passing between them. It would be better if they could sneak past this guy without attracting notice - it would give them more of a head start if they found wherever Arielle's soul was being kept prisoner.

Heart in his throat, Eliot edged closer to the top of the steep stairs, feeling Quentin warm against his back, just inches away. He slipped, turning sideways to press as far away from the guard as he could manage, half afraid of tripping some invisible magical wire as he stepped down onto the first step. But nothing happened.

The stairs were steep and narrow, and Eliot had a flash of nauseating deja vu, remembering a time when he’d locked his Bambi down here, when everything in his life had seemed so unsettled and harrowing. Shit was still unsettled and harrowing, of course, but he had a full decade of experience on the complete mess of a person he’d once been. He now had a well-practiced ability to deal with his shit. Thanks to Quentin, who had almost died by throwing himself on an utterly unnecessary grenade just days ago.

But he wasn’t thinking about that. They were on a pause.

At the bottom of the staircase, they paused, looking back over their shoulders at the guard at the top, utterly oblivious to their presence. Quentin held his hand up and Eliot gave him a tiny silent high-five, because whatever. Q was so stupidly cute sometimes.

Eliot’s knowledge of Whitespire started to work against him a bit as they went down the hallway. In his own day, these dungeons were not much in use, and he’d made the erroneous assumption that it would look somewhat similar in their present surroundings. They’d realized that there might be more people around, but what Eliot hadn’t counted on was the sight of every cell occupied, with two attentive guards stationed in front of each.

“Shit,” he breathed, just loud enough for Quentin to hear him. Q’s magic had flickered slightly in his own surprise, but he squared his shoulders and kept the phosphoromancy up, shielding them both from detection. It was foolhardy in the extreme to walk down the dimly lit stone corridor, sliding between the guards in order to look into every cell. If they got to the end, they’d hit a dead end through which the only escape was back the way that had come. But they’d discussed this - they had to be sure.

The guards were dressed in fine Fillorian garb, and while they did appear to be standing at attention, upon closer examination Eliot could see the sheen of boredom on some of their faces, and even caught a few conversing quietly to one another, complaining about working conditions and making plans to demand shorter hours. It reminded him of Fen in a way that caused a fresh pang to go through Eliot’s chest. Being here was difficult for obvious reasons, but it also made Eliot realize how much he missed being king. Not enough to want it back in any immediate sense, but enough to regret what he had never managed to fully have.

The cells all appeared to be filled, with no apparent distinction between types of prisoners. Of course, it was impossible to tell just from looking at them, but Eliot would have bet that some of them were no more than serving boys who’d gotten in to the cooking sherry, while others seemed more seasoned, like they were very used to their surroundings. At the end of the corridor there was a tiny alcove where Eliot imagined the guards sometimes came to rest their legs when they thought they could get away with it. He and Q ducked into it, and bent their heads close together to talk.

“It’s not down here,” Quentin said, unnecessarily. His hands were rigid, fingers twisting in what looked like a painful combination of tuts. “And I - El, we need to go, I don’t think I can keep…”

Quentin trailed off, biting his lip in concentration. The spell he was doing was clearly taking a lot out of him. Even in the flickering candlelight, Eliot could see a sheen of sweat on Quentin’s skin that was clearly coming from more than just fear. It also reminded Eliot uncomfortably of the pale, clammy way he’d looked after the witch’s attack. God, he wished he could stop fucking seeing it.

“Okay,” he whispered back, shaking the thoughts away. “Okay, let’s get back upstairs then. Stay behind me so you can focus on casting.” He was prepared to argue with Quentin if necessary, but Q just nodded, pursing his lips, and they stepped back out of the alcove and back along the corridor. Walking down the middle, there was only a few feet of space between them and the guards watching the cells on either side. They kept their breathing slow and their treads as quiet as possible, Quentin’s casting keeping them invisible to everyone but each other.

They made it nearly back to the base of the stairs, and then Eliot heard Quentin pull in a hiss of pain through his teeth. He turned in time to watch his hand falter, and knew without asking that the spell had glitched. The guard closest to them blinked and turned his head, and then his eyes and mouth widened together, as he clearly saw for the first time the two strange men who had infiltrated his domain. “_ Hey_,” he said, loud and indignant. “What do you think - ”

“Q, _ run_,” Eliot said, and Quentin must have seen something in his expression, because for once he did as he was told. Eliot spun around to put himself between Q and the guards, and heard the sound of his feet stomping up the stairs. He thought of the battle magic he knew, but it all seemed unnecessarily disruptive, more likely to cause the entire castle to come looking for them, than anything else. Inspired by Quentin using Alice’s specialty, Eliot found himself drawing on a pool of knowledge he hadn’t touched in a decade. The air around him went cold, as he pulled the moisture in towards him and turned it to ice, twisting his arms up and out and pushing the cool currents forward from his chest.

The guards nearest him froze, as the air around them crystalized. It was a feeble barrier, one that would melt within a minute, but it was enough to shut off all sound coming from the guards and arrest their movements. _ Thanks, Bambi. _He spun and bolted after Q, running up the narrow stairs two at a time until he emerged at the top.

The guard they had passed earlier was gone, probably having followed Quentin. Where _ was _ he? It had been hardly any time at all, and yet Quentin was nowhere to be found. What if the guard had taken him? What if he was being frog marched off to the consul’s chambers right this second?

Heart in his throat, Eliot took a few steps back down the hallway the way they’d first come. But then -

“El!”

The voice came from behind him, and Eliot felt a hand grip on to the back of his shirt. He fought the instinct to pull away, letting himself be guided by the familiarity of the voice. He fell back against a tapestry and then kept going, finding himself in a small antechamber with Quentin and - 

“Jack?” Eliot asked, shock making him speak far too loud. Arielle’s youngest brother was standing with his back against the wall, head cocked to catch sound from the corridor outside.

“Hi, Eliot,” he said, smiling bright.

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Quentin reached forward and squeezed Eliot’s arm hard. “Jack totally just saved my ass.”

“What are you _ doing _ here?” Eliot asked, stepping back so he could get a better look at Jack Ashmore. He was dressed in servant’s garb just like they were, clearly disguised.

“It’s been forever, we were worried about you two,” Jack said. “So me and Leon came up here, got ourselves temporary positions in the castle. We’ve had to steer clear of Ari of course, but it hasn’t been too difficult. These days she’s not really one to interact with the masses.” There was a mixture of disgust and dismay in his voice, and Eliot shook his head, trying to catch himself up. The sight of Jack was like a shot of pure adrenaline - a familiar face, someone else who had a stake in this, who wanted Arielle back and would be able to help them.

“Where’s Leon?” Quentin asked. It was a good question, but Eliot was still a few steps behind, his mind buzzing.

“Where did the guard go?” he asked, looking between Quentin and Jack. “The one at the top of the stairs?”

“I saw the two of you when you came in,” Jack said, instead of a direct answer to the question. “But - oh, it’s not safe for us to stay here, the guard will be back way too soon. Follow me.”

Jack filled them in at a quick whisper while he walked them through the corridors and towards the castle’s kitchens. “I recognized you out in the courtyard but I didn’t want to approach you and disrupt whatever plan you had going… so I followed you, but then you _ disappeared_, which is really a neat trick, I gotta say. Anyway, I figured you must be going down to the dungeons, so I waited and when I heard something down below, I rushed up to the guard and made up some story about a disturbance in the grand hall. He’ll have figured out I was lying by now, but that doesn’t signify.”

They wound up in a small hall near the kitchen, empty except for a few other servants darting around and clearing the plates from what was clearly the kitchen staff’s meal. “Leon’s been working in the kitchens, I’ve been out in the gardens for the most part,” he explained. “Where the hell have the two of you been?”

“We’ve - been - _ questing_,” Quentin said, sounding affronted at the question. Eliot put an arm around him.

“It’s been - there have been some bumps in the road.” God, what an understatement. “But we’re here, and we have what we need to save Arielle.”

“And Taseer, too,” Jack said at once.

“What?” Eliot’s heart had jumped into his throat again. “Are you sure?”

“No,” Jack said, running a hand through his bristly red hair. “Leon reckons I might just be seeing what I want to see, but… I don’t know. I like the guy.”

“So you think he’s under the same - uh - _ condition_, as Arielle?” Quentin asked, anxious. “Why do you think that?”

Jack looked around at the still mostly empty room, and then nodded his head at Quentin and Eliot, gesturing them to sit at one of the long benches. Eliot almost wanted to protest, to say they were in a bit of a hurry. But Jack was really their best chance of progress, so he sat, keeping Quentin tight to his side like the fucking security blanket that he kind of was.

“The two of them have been walking around this place with their noses up in the air,” Jack said. “I’d recognize strange behavior in my sister, of course. But even if Taseer…” he sighed, his posture slumping forward as he rested his arms on the table across from them, “even if Taseer really was this much of a pompous ass all along… we’d have to believe he genuinely wants Arielle around, right? Or else what would be the point?”

Eliot turned to look at Quentin, who shrugged, then back to Jack. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if he’s not cursed, or whatever it’s called, then shouldn’t he show her some measure of affection? I haven’t been able to get too close, for obvious reasons. But I have seen them together. Even when they think nobody else is watching. He’s like… it’s like he’s only acting out the steps of being a person in a relationship. Stiff, and formal, like he’s reading off lines instead of speaking genuinely.”

“Like a pod person,” Quentin said, because somehow he got even nerdier in times of stress. Jack blinked at that but didn’t ask; some Quentin-isms were better left untouched.

“The point is, I think they’re both in trouble, and I think I know where you need to go next,” Jack said, eyes widened significantly. “I’ll get you there, and then the husband and I are getting the hell out of here. Breaking magic curses is really more your line of work, from what I understand.”

“Our track record is less than stellar,” Eliot said, but he smiled at Jack anyway. “But yes, we’ll do everything we can. And Jack - It’s incredibly good to see a familiar face.”

* * *

**QUENTIN**

In retrospect, they probably should have _ planned _ on planting spies in Whitespire from the beginning. It was such a simple idea, one that could have saved them their near-miss in the dungeons. But everything about the quest had been so esoteric and magical and strange, and it really had felt like something they’d have to do without assistance.

“Thank God for Jack and Leon,” Eliot said, plucking the sentiment straight out of Quentin’s own brain.

“Yeah. We might have spent days wandering around looking.”

They’d had a list of places to look for Arielle’s captured soul. The dungeons, the consul’s private chambers, the war room, and more. But according to Jack’s espionage, the place they actually wanted to go was Arielle and Taseer’s suite of rooms. It made no sense, and yet it made all the sense in the world. It didn’t matter if Arielle and Taseer knew something had been done to them. Rita had admitted to being somewhat aware of her own imprisonment while it was happening to her. It was just a matter of not _ caring._

Not for the first time, Quentin tried to imagine what Arielle was going through, what the experience was like from her perspective. It was probably a good thing, all in all, that she didn’t give a damn about her own condition. But it just meant it was all going to suck so much worse if (no, _ when_), they managed to free her.

“The plan is simple,” Quentin said, gripping Eliot’s hand for a moment and then dropping it as they made their way with purpose up a staircase. “Just - get in, get out. Find Ari and Taseer.”

“And I’m sure absolutely nothing will go wrong whatsoever,” Eliot said, falsely bright. “And if we fail, it won’t just be our necks on the line. How do you think the Ashmores are going to feel about us if we get another one of their kids mixed up in our mess?”

“It’s Taseer’s mess, if it’s anyone’s,” Quentin said, lowering his voice as they passed a group of women in a grand hallway. They were entering the residential portion of the castle, blending in with the crowds of servants flittering about. They’d be arriving at restricted portions very soon. “And please. As if Mrs. Ashmore didn’t try and come up to Whitespire herself. She probably sent the boys. And anyway, Jack and Leon have just as much a right to be there for Arielle as we do.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to show me the spell?” Eliot asked, an apparent nonsequitur. Quentin looked up at him to see a pinch of worry between his brows. They stepped off into a hallway branching off from the main one, this area unlit and seemingly rarely used. Quentin pushed down a flicker of annoyance. Eliot had a right to be concerned. After all, Quentin’s energy had flagged down in the dungeons and almost ruined everything. But this was just for a few minutes. It would be costly, both in time and in risk of exposure, to go over the spell with Eliot just so he wouldn’t have to do it on his own.

“I’ve got it, just - stay close.” Eliot bit his lip but didn’t object, for which Quentin was grateful.

Quentin re-cast the phosphoromancy shield that Alice had once shown him, and the two of them moved together back into the hallway. They had to wait for other people to open doors so they could slip in behind without drawing attention, but it was a relatively easy thing to gain access to the inner sanctum of the castle’s living quarters. “Lax security,” Quentin murmured to Eliot.

“You sound disapproving.”

“I’m just saying, our intentions are pure. If another magic user got in here, though, it would be a simple thing to slip in here and murder the consul.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” Eliot muttered darkly. “For now I think we should focus on the task at hand.”

Eliot had one of his hands on Quentin’s lower back, steering him down the hall and towards their destination. It was Jack’s intel that gave them the layout of the castle, and Leon’s that told them that Arielle and Taseer would be out riding at this time of day, not due back for some hours. Of course, there was no guarantee; their window of time was imprecise at best, and the longer they stayed in Whitespire, the more likely it was that someone would discover their intrusion.

“Third door on the right,” Eliot whispered in his ear, and Quentin steered them to the side of the hallway. It appeared deserted, but they waited a beat to be sure before Eliot, still under cover of Quentin’s shield, did a quick spell to unlock the door.

Inside was…

“Deja vu,” Eliot breathed, pressing his chest into Quentin’s back as he pushed him further into the room. “I just realized, I think Margo’s room was next door. Or. Will be next door?”

“I don’t know,” Quentin said, shaking away his own wave of familiarity. The room was formal and luxurious but somehow… _ bland_. It looked the way Quentin’s own room in Whitespire had looked. Set up for an important occupant, but never personalized or lived in. “They really sleep here every night? It’s so…”

“Cold,” Eliot finished for him. “I noticed that too.” Eliot was walking further into the room, his eyes scanning everything, and Quentin blinked away his distraction and began scanning as well. The room they were in now had a small antechamber, an alcove with comfortable seating and a small table. On the other side of the ornate bedframe was a door.

“Where does that lead?” Quentin asked, walking over to it. “I don’t think my room had one, back when - well. You know.” Quentin actually hadn’t gotten much use out of his room in Whitespire, but he didn’t remember a door like this one. Of that much he was sure.

“I think it connects two bedrooms,” Eliot said, approaching as well. He leaned over to put his ear to the door. “I don’t hear anything. Do we risk opening it?”

“It’s hardly the time to play it safe,” Quentin said, and with a shrug he swung the unlocked door open.

It _ was _ another bedroom. Or at least, it might have been. But it contained no bed to speak of, just a large table, on top of which sat a strange metal cage, the bars twisting and dipping into one another with intricacy that could only mean one thing in this context.

“Magic,” Eliot said, and Quentin swallowed, nodding in agreement. The cage itself was humming with it, but something inside was vibrating even harder. It almost looked like an orb of floating light, but when Quentin tried to stare at it, the edges fuzzed, his glance sliding away before he could really lock on to be sure.

He felt Eliot step up beside him, their arms brushing together as they both looked at the cage. “There are two of them,” Eliot said, sounding strangled, and Quentin realized he was right. Two of those fuzzy, unspecific orbs. He didn’t need to be told what they were. Even if he hadn’t come here for just this purpose, he would have felt it. Arielle was in that cage. Taseer was too.

“Well, fuck,” Quentin said. “We found it.”

“Don’t sound so excited,” Eliot said, his voice wavering with obvious nerves. “Here, watch the door.” He took Quentin's pack from him and crouched down on the floor. He enlarged it with a few twists of his fingers, and quickly pulled out the jars, along with the few other supplies they needed for the spell. Chalk, a scattering of dried flowers, Bella's notebook, turned to the page with the spell written out. “Okay. Okay, this is it, then.”

“I’m feeling a real sense of anticlimax,” Quentin said, uncertain, as he helped Eliot lay everything out in the proper configuration. “If this were a story there would have been a bunch of goons to fight through and then the cage would have been guarded by a mini-boss, at the very least.”

“But why would they need a guard?” Eliot said. “Nobody but us even knows that something is wrong. God, just think of it, Taseer and Ari going to sleep every night and their _ souls _ are just hanging out on the other side of the wall.”

Quentin positioned the last of the jars, each of the four on a different corner of the chalk outline they had sketched on the stone floor. This room, despite being built as a bedroom, was uncarpeted and bare.

“They must have known,” Quentin said, standing back from the symbols and studying the line work. “They _ must _ know.”

“But they have no reason to care,” Eliot said. He paused, staring at Quentin until their eyes met, blinking solemnly. “Moment of truth?”

They had practiced this spell before even setting out from the cottage, and as they faced the ingredients on the floor, the light from the strange orbs illuminating the otherwise sparse room, Quentin thought back to how he had felt before any of this started. How wrenching it had been to step away from Teddy, to risk so much of their time and energy and safety for the chance to be standing right here.

“Moment of truth,” Quentin said, and with a final nod at Eliot, they started to cast in unison.

It was clear almost immediately that it wasn’t going to work, and the culprit was obvious.

“Oh, God,” Eliot said, his hands dropping to his sides as the magic fizzled out between them. He sank slowly to his knees in front of one corner of the chalk spell, beside the jar of river water. “It’s not going to…”

“We knew,” Quentin said, swallowing hard. “We knew this was a possibility.” He felt cold all over, his heart constricting tight in his chest. He lowered himself to the ground beside Eliot, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Eliot stared at the jar, silent, for a long moment. “It’s my fault,” he said. “Everything. _ Everything _we went through, and now we just…”

“I made the choice,” Quentin said, pressing his forehead into Eliot’s shoulder. “I chose you over her, and I don’t regret it, El.”

“But she - we were supposed to be able to - ” Eliot cut himself off with an audible snap of his teeth and reached forward, tracing a finger along the outside of the jar of water. It was glowing like the others, but something was clearly lacking even so, some piece of the magical energy needed to connect the currents. “Quentin.”

“What’s wrong?” There was a sharpness to Eliot’s voice that was clearly coming from something more than anger or denial.

“I - feel something,” Eliot said. His hand was still touching the jar. “It’s - I think it’s working now.”

_“What_?”

Not wanting to waste time, they stood up and tried to start the casting again, but it flopped immediately. “I felt it,” Eliot insisted. “I’m absolutely sure, I felt _ something _ when I was touching - ow!”

“Sorry.” Quentin released Eliot’s arm, which he realized he’d been squeezing hard enough to hurt. “Sorry, it’s just… you _ did _ feel something. Because it’s you. You’re the ingredient.”

Eliot gaped at him, but Quentin’s brain was on a roll. He paced around the perimeter of the room, careful to avoid the spellwork and ingredients. “There was a reason, El, that we thought this would work, right? Because you getting sick… it was like it was part of the quest. Another test for us to pass. And _ every time _ there’s a test, we’ve picked wrong, right? I chose to save you with the river water, you chose me over the hearth-fire, you wanted to give up when you thought I was dead - all of it seems like the kind of thing that would break the quest, right? We’re supposed to give shit up to save Ari, but we _ didn’t_.”

“So it’s like some sort of opposites thing?” Eliot asked. “We talked about this, about the quest rewarding us for choosing each other, but - ”

“So you’re here. You’re alive, and the river water is in you. Or on you. I don’t know. All I know is, _ you _ are the ingredient, El.”

Eliot blinked at Quentin for a moment, then took a step forward and grabbed at his arm to stop him from pacing. He leaned forward to peck him on the forehead, gave a decisive nod, and then folded himself to the ground, sitting in the spot where the river ingredient was meant to stand. “Well then. That’s that.”

Eliot’s trust was a stunning thing.

He was just sitting there, looking up at Quentin with expectant eyes, like he hadn’t noticed the biggest, most glaring problem with this revelation.

"But that means - " Quentin swallowed, feeling his heart crawl up into his throat. Sweat was breaking out on his brow. "That means that I have to do the spell by myself."

Eliot sat still for a moment, blinking at him, and then stood, unfolding his legs in a slow, graceful movement and approaching Quentin with two steady steps. "Q, you're a good magician. And we've studied this spell backwards and forwards. You can do this."

"El," Quentin said. "El, if you're an ingredient, then - if I fuck this up it's not just Ari I'm risking. I don't know if - "

Eliot brought his hands up to curl along the sides of Quentin's face, bending to kiss him, soft and sweet and so fucking self-assured that Quentin felt himself relax a little bit, in spite of himself. "Quentin Coldwater, you've got this."

"If you feel anything weird," Quentin said, going up on his toes to keep his face level with Eliot's. "Eliot, promise me - "

"I won't let you kill me, Q," Eliot said, deadly serious. They kissed again, the kind of kiss that wasn't going anywhere but existed just for itself, a moment of connection so gorgeously uncomplicated and pure that Quentin wished he could forget where they were and keep it going indefinitely. With the greatest reluctance, he let Eliot pull away, their lips parting with a slick sound that Quentin felt low in his gut.

"Okay," Quentin said. "Okay, let's do this."

The thing was, Eliot was right. Quentin _ could _do this. The spell wasn't even really a spell, at least not in the traditional sense. It was more of a ritual, something to channel through the magic of the ingredients. It was how Bella and Rodney had managed to do this to save Rita, even though neither of them had had the skills of a trained magician. With Quentin's experience, he had a leg up. But it was also a lot - an intense amount of energy was required, and all along they'd been counting on doing this together.

"Quentin," Eliot said, as he walked back over to the water corner of the chalk outline. "I'll tell you to stop if you're hurting me. But you - promise me you'll stop if it's hurting you."

"I - "

"This shit goes both ways. I mean it."

There really wasn't room to argue, especially when Quentin could see the glint of residual anger behind Eliot's eyes. It would probably be a while before Eliot would fully forgive Quentin for that whole thing with the witch. Not that Quentin could blame him.

But they were on a pause.

"Yessir," Quentin said, offering him a feeble salute. Eliot rolled his eyes and gestured Quentin forward, into position.

Quentin knew that if he hesitated, if he second-guessed himself, they’d be standing there all day. And really, even with Jack and Leon’s assist, they had no way of knowing how much time was left. So, with a single deep breath by way of fortification, he lifted his hands up in the air and let the magic within him pool up and out, at the same time that he pulled the magic from the air around him, and from the anchor points in front of him.

A jar filled with dark dirt, and the accompanying memory of freefall.

A jar with three feathers, flashes of Arnold’s understanding eyes, the wrenching tug of a promised goodbye to his friends from a place he’d once called home, the flashing anxiety of the phoenix’s attack, the imperative to protect Eliot roiling up from out of the deepest parts of him.

A jar with crackling, magically preserved fire, the cost of which had been Eliot’s own steadfast determination to keep him safe, along with a faultline in their trust for one another that Quentin knew he’d have to fight to repair.

And Eliot, jaw set, eyes steady and firm, looking up at him with all the belief, and affection, and love, that Quentin knew Eliot felt for him.

The magic was a living breathing thing, twisting outward from him, drawing on the energy of everything he held dear. He thought about Arielle as hard as he could, trying not to focus on the ball of light that wouldn’t allow for direct scrutiny, but instead on Arielle as he held her in his heart, in his mind. His wife, his dearest friend. Teddy’s mother. Worth saving just on that score alone, of course, but so much more than only that.

He even thought of Taseer, attempting to smooth away the edges of the anger he’d held inside him the past few months, recontextualizing him into the victim Quentin was now certain he really was. He recalled how good Taseer had been with Teddy, with all of them, really, stepping in to an unconventional family setup without an ounce of jealousy or unease. He’d made Arielle smile like Quentin had never seen before; he’d taken the brightest and happiest woman he knew and made her brighter and happier, let the best parts of her shine out upon the world.

Another deep breath, the energy pulsing brighter, white-hot within him. Another. Another. For Arielle. For Taseer. For Teddy. For Eliot. For himself.

It worked.

It worked, and he would have known it without eyes to see with or ears to hear with. The orbs inside the cage of twisted metal grew brighter and brighter until the entire room was suffused with white light, and the cage itself seemed to screech in protest as its captive souls, straining to get free, finally broke loose. But it wasn’t any of that, that made Quentin sure of his success.

He felt Arielle and Taseer in the room with him. He felt the joy of freedom, the nearly painful pulse of relief, as the orbs of light burst forth and then dissipated, the room growing abruptly dim in the absence of its only source of light.

Quentin stood, his arms still outstretched in front of him, staring at nothing, hearing nothing. Feeling - tired. Exhilarated, yes, but tired also, tired in his body and in his mind, as the reality of success started to battle with the fear of so many near-misses, and so much uncertainty still ahead of him.

He came to himself when he felt Eliot’s hands on his arms. “Q? You’re okay?”

There was a strain in Eliot’s voice that snapped Quentin fully back to himself. “Oh. Yes. _ Yes_, I’m fine. Are you?”

“Yes,” Eliot said, solemn for a single beat. And then a wide smile cracked over his face. “Q, you _ did it _ ."He pulled Quentin forward into his arms, squeezing tight, and Quentin let his body relax into the warmth immediately, going practically limp. Eliot was kissing the top of his head again and again, repeating quiet words into his hair. “You fucking did it - you did so _ good_, Q, you were _ amazing._”

“There’s no time,” Quentin said, because next to the relief was a growing awareness of where exactly they were. This wasn’t the end of the road. Not quite yet. He burrowed his face into Eliot’s collarbone, trembling with exhaustion. “No time, El, we’ve got to go and find them. Now.”

“Give yourself a minute, baby, that was a fuck of a lot of magic,” Eliot said, his hands soothing as they stroked up and down Quentin’s spine. “Just breathe with me, okay?”

Quentin nodded into Eliot’s chest. He felt like he could probably fall asleep like this, leaning upright against Eliot. But as comforting as Eliot’s concern was, Quentin knew the stakes here. They didn’t have time to linger. They needed to move.

And just as he found the strength within him to stand upright and and separate himself from Eliot, the door from the hallway slammed open.

“_Quentin_?!”

Q would have recognized that voice anywhere, even in its current state of breathless disbelief.

“_Ari_,” he and Eliot said together, and they turned as one towards the door.


	20. Chapter Twenty - In Which Negotiations Are Undertaken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whether you'll be tuning in to Season 5 or not, I hope you take care of yourself this week! We are a small but mighty fandom, and I love being here with you all.

**QUENTIN**

For a few moments, there was a lot of crying. Arielle practically tripped her way into the room and into Quentin’s arms, and then Taseer, stumbling in a few moments later, accepted a hug from Eliot. And then they switched, and cried some more, both of them attempting to blubber out questions and explanations and excuses and apologies all at once.

“What are you doing here?” Taseer asked, the first to gain some semblance of control. “How did you - are you dressed like - ”

“It is a long, _ long _ story,” Quentin said, holding Arielle against his side as she sobbed into his shoulder. “Listen, I think our first move needs to be getting the fuck out of Whitespire. We can find somewhere secure to talk, but the longer we stay here, the greater the chance that someone will find out…”

“Do you know who actually cast the spell?” Eliot asked, coming forward so he could put a hand on both Taseer and Arielle’s arms.

“Yes,” Taseer said. There were still tears falling freely down his face, but he was coming back to himself, aware of the precarious nature of their situation, at least for the moment. “A sorcerer for hire. My uncle paid him to keep us trapped here.”

“But _ why_?” Quentin asked. And then he paused, shaking his head at himself. “Nevermind. Step one is getting out. We can ask questions later. The sooner we go, the sooner we get back to - ”

“Teddy!” Arielle yelled the name, then choked on another gasp, pulling out of Quentin’s arms and then spinning around the room, as if expecting her son to emerge from behind a tapestry. “Where - Oh no, oh _ no, Teddy_.”

“It’s okay,” Eliot said. He still had a hand on Arielle’s arm, but she was pulling away from him, curling into herself. “Teddy’s okay, sweetheart.”

“I _ left him_,” she said, and Quentin flinched at the sound of her voice, something primal and anguished pouring forth from her, the likes of which he’d never seen from Arielle. She was a happy person. A hopeful one, bright and optimistic even at the worst of times. He’d never really known her in despair. “I left my _ son_.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Quentin said, trying to pull her back in. All three of them were converging on her now, and Quentin knew Taseer and Eliot were just as intent on comforting her as he was. But she shook her head, pulling back from them all until her back was against the wall.

She looked up, her eyes red-rimmed and anguished, and then her expression turned cold and blank. “No time,” she said. “We need to move. You’re right, Quentin, our best chance is to get out of here now before they’ve noticed anything is wrong.”

“There’s a possibility that the person who cast the spell already knows it’s been broken,” Eliot said, responding to Arielle’s matter-of-fact tone with one of his own.

“That’s likely,” Taseer put in with a frown, and then glanced down at the remainder of the spellwork on the ground. “What _ is _ all of this?”

“It’s the reason it’s taken us so long to get here,” Eliot said, grim. “Leave it, it’s useless now.”

Quentin looked down at the mess of the spell. The jars were no longer glowing; the feathers were singed, the flame burned down to embers. Even something in the jar of dirt seemed faded, like somehow the earth itself had lost its health. With a shock of fear, Quentin snapped his eyes over to Eliot, to find Eliot already looking back at him.

“Are you - ” he started.

“I’m okay,” Eliot said, stepping forward to kiss Quentin on the forehead. “Promise.”

Quentin stared at Eliot for a moment, darting his eyes over his face to detect him for signs of harm. But whatever had happened to the other ingredients seemed to have left Eliot untouched. The water coursing through his veins had done its job twice - it had saved Eliot from death, and it had rescued Arielle and Taseer from enslavement.

“What - what?” Taseer said, his eyes wide as he looked at them, then back at the spell materials on the ground, then to the empty cage. “They held us in there. I - I remember now. We were in a _ cage_.”

“Your souls,” Quentin said, and Arielle made a sound akin to a whimper, coming forward and gripping Quentin’s arm tight.

“But we _ knew_,” Arielle said. “We knew what they were doing, but we just didn’t care. It was - I wasn’t myself, but I - I _ was_, and - ”

“Ari,” Eliot said, compassion in every word. “Ari, we know. It’s awful, it really is. But let’s get out of here before there’s more trouble.”

Arielle seemed to be vacillating between panic and composure, blinking back tears and trying to regulate her breathing, even as she turned towards the door and squared her shoulders. “Let’s go.”

“Do you want to get anything first?” Taseer asked, still sounding dazed. “I mean - clothing, or - ” he blinked at the look on Arielle’s face, and then shook his head, coming to himself. “No, of course you don’t, I’m sorry - I’m a bit - that is to say, I’m having a bit of trouble _ processing_…”

Quentin’s heart hurt for Taseer, for the bewildered, shaken way he kept darting his eyes around the room, as if he thought somehow it would all become clear to him in no time at all. Getting him out of the room was a bit like herding a cat, but things went smoother when Arielle recognized his distress, even through her own, and came up to him, taking his hand.

Even as his heart pounded in relief, Quentin still felt a sharp edge of anxiety as they made their way through the halls of Whitespire’s private wing. Their best chance was to act as if they had every right to be there, but Arielle and Taseer were far too discomposed to act natural, and Eliot and Quentin had to hurry them along, nudging with elbows and whispering words of encouragement every time Ari started to slow down, or Taseer stumbled awkwardly to a halt in front of a doorway, wondering and confused.

“We just need to get you outside,” Quentin said, heartsick, as Arielle took the hand not gripped in Taseer’s and tangled her fingers into Quentin’s shirt, like an anchor. “Just get you away from here and everything will be okay.” The words were empty. The truth was, Quentin hadn’t given a great deal of thought to this part of the quest. He supposed, in fact, that the quest was now over, their objective completed. Arielle and Taseer were free, and now they were just living in the fallout.

What kinds of long-term effects could Arielle and Taseer expect from what they’d been through? The trauma was bound to catch up with them, even as their bewilderment and the first shock of awareness faded. Quentin thought of Rita, the brittle and seemingly unhappy old woman who had given them the tools they needed to get here in the first place. Was her strangeness, her isolation, just a natural result of her age and the loss of her love, later in life? Or was any of it the lingering effect of her own experiences so many years ago? Would Arielle grow to be like her aunt, distrustful and sad, lingering on the outside of a family who seemed more used to her than fond of her? No. Quentin could never be anything but grateful for Arielle in his life, no matter how her trauma changed her.

Eliot and Quentin exchanged nervous glances as they kept Arielle and Taseer moving. “It would be best if we could take some horses,” Eliot said. “Get out of here quicker. Taseer, would it seem suspicious if you ordered horses to be prepared again? I know you just got back from a ride.”

“I was to go out on a ride every day at this time,” Taseer answered, nonsensical and dream-like. “The illusion of routine was to convince the people that I was content with my role here at the castle.”

“Yes,” Eliot said, an admirable lack of impatience in his voice. “Okay, I understand, but are you _ forbidden _ to go out again now?”“They’ll know,” Arielle said, fear making her voice shake. “They always told us where to go, what to say, and we let them because it didn’t seem important… they’ll know if we break from our patterns.”

Arielle and Taseer both seemed outside of themselves, in some way, a detached horror steering them through the motions of walking. It was like they’d given themselves over to Quentin and Eliot’s mastery, in the absence of forces that had been controlling them for so long. Quentin used the blank trust to keep them moving, feeling the sick twist of dread and disgust deep in his stomach.

In all, the experience reminded Quentin of the time back in high school when Julia had had her wisdom teeth removed, and she’d become weepy and confused on the pain meds, like a deer in headlights as Quentin tried to steer her back to bed for rest. Of course, that had been kind of _ funny_, all things considered, since Julia said the most bizarre things when she was high, and this experience, in contrast, was decidedly lacking even a hint of comedy.

“Q,” Eliot said, quiet but firm, as they made their way down the staircase. “We need to make a call about what to do if we get stopped. If someone comes for us - ”

“They’re not in any real condition to make a run for it,” Quentin said, wincing as Arielle’s grip on his arm tightened to the point of pain.

“If the sorcerer who trapped them in the first place is here in the castle…” Eliot continued.

“He’s not,” Taseer said, surprising Quentin by sounding mostly level-headed. His lips were bloodless, his eyes round and red at the edges, but he seemed to be coming out of the worst of his confusion, snapping back in to the present moment and the task ahead of them. Quentin hoped it would last. “My uncle has other magic users, but nobody so powerful as all that. I have the feeling you could take them handily in a fight.”

“That might be so,” Eliot said, sounding uncertain, “but I’d just as soon avoid a confrontation altogether, if we can manage it.”

They spilled out of a hallway back into the public area of the palace, the four of them heading with swift focus towards the nearest courtyard entrance. Taseer and Arielle had gotten it together enough that they were walking ahead of Eliot and Quentin, their heads up and eyes forward. Slightly more plausible than the sight of two palace servants cajoling and steering the consul’s nephew and his intended bride through the halls like confused puppy dogs. Quentin’s pulse skyrocketed as they wended their way through a light crowd, making their way past the turn-off to the kitchens. It would be easier, once outside, to get lost in the crowd. They might even be able to get away with going to the stables and fetching horses. Surely Taseer’s authority was still enough to - 

“Taseer!” a voice called from across the large hall, and Quentin froze, heart sinking. There was no reason he should have recognized the voice, but there was a supercilious note in it, prim and condescending while also being higher than expected, that put Quentin in mind of a man who was used to being obeyed without question.

“My uncle,” Taseer hissed, confirming Quentin’s worst fears, as Arielle jolted backwards, nearly knocking into Eliot as she fought to turn around.

The man emerging from the throne room across the way was recognizably a relative of Taseer’s, but with none of the latter’s charming good looks. He made a much closer resemblance to his distant descendant Tick Pickwick, and under other circumstances, Quentin might have been fascinated to think of meeting someone whose many-times great-grandson he had met. Time travel was weird and interesting.

He _ wasn’t_, however, as interested in sticking around to chat with the guy, given what he knew of his ruthlessness. Unfortunately, as Quentin took in the expression on Toramond’s face, it was pretty clear that they weren’t going to have any other choice.

“Come here at _ once_,” Toramond’s voice boomed across the empty space between them, loud enough that several servants and ladies-in-waiting passing through the space froze, looking back in surprise at the angered outburst.

“Do we run?” Arielle hissed, sounding far more frightened than Quentin had ever heard her. At least the dreamy unreal quality had left her voice.

“I don’t know - ”

“No, uncle,” Taseer said, surprisingly calm. “I think I’ll just be on my way.”

“Do not start any unpleasantness,” Toramond said, taking a few more steps forward. He was still standing near the entrance to the throne room, easily thirty feet away, but as he spoke, a contingent of guards filed out of the room after him, clearly awaiting their cue.

Quentin’s fingers itched. He had never had a natural affinity for battle magic, but in this moment he felt like he could have fired off a spell to rival anything he’d seen Kady Orloff-Diaz accomplish back in his Brakebills days.

“I don’t believe I’m the one to have started the unpleasantness,” Taseer said. “You are the one who - ”

“_Inside. Now_,” Toramond interrupted, now sounding like a father scolding a child. Taseer went stiff with anger, and Eliot muttered a curse under his breath, just loud enough for Quentin to hear. “Or I shall force you.” The other people in the large open hall shuffled, slowing their movements so as to linger and hear the rest of this clearly fascinating exchange. With a jolt, Quentin realized that for the last several months, they must have been used to total obedience and harmony from Taseer and Arielle, as they smiled and nodded and reinforced Toramond’s authority without pause. This exchange was already scandalous enough to start gossip, and Quentin was sure Toramond realized that.

Quentin glanced behind him at Eliot, who had a hand on Taseer’s shoulder and another against the small of Arielle’s back. Like an anchor, or a reassurance. Eliot met his glance and grimaced, reluctantly acquiescent. They were agreed, then - trying to fight their way out of this was probably _ not _ actually their best move to start.

“Taseer,” Quentin said, soft and hopefully reassuring. “We’ve got you. Let’s play along for now, just until - ”

“He has held us _ prisoner_,” Taseer snapped, his voice quieter now but still far too loud. A few of the people still milling around the edges of the room glanced in his direction, sharp and curious. Quentin darted another look at Toramond in time to see his eyes flash with fury and fear. As suspected, then. The consul wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of people learning that he’d forced his nephew into obeisance. Maybe they could use that, threaten to cause a scene. Quentin’s mind was racing, trying to figure out the best moves to take. He was a bystander in this, by all accounts. This was a stand-off between Taseer and Toramond.

It lasted another thirty seconds, Taseer and Toramond glaring at each other across the expanse of the hall, everyone else in the room pretending to be going about their business, and fooling absolutely no one. And then finally, Taseer glanced over at Arielle, and something inside of him deflated. He took a despondent step forward. Quentin, Eliot, and Arielle all followed his lead, and some of the tension filling the air dissipated. Nosy servants and courtiers alike reluctantly continued on their routes, leaving the room as Toramond, his guards, and the four attempted escapees made their way into the throne room for a private audience.

Once inside, Quentin tried very hard not to think about his past experiences in this room. He viewed the thrones with distrust, well aware of what could happen if anyone were to sit upon them. Instead, he focused all of his energy on the protection of his family, keeping himself within touching distance of Eliot, Arielle, and Taseer. Natural battle lines were drawn, with Toramond taking a seat in his own ceremonial chair (decidedly _ not _ a throne), with his guards flanking him, while Taseer guided the others to a place where they could keep their backs up against a pillar, some distance away.

It was an almost awkward standstill, with Eliot, Quentin, Taseer, and Arielle creating a wall of clear distrust and disgust, while Toramond allowed yet more guards and a few courtiers who had clearly been waiting on him to cluster around, creating a pocket of support for the consul. The sight of the nobles in the room convinced Quentin of one thing: something had happened to alert Toramond that his prisoners had escaped. It hadn’t been a coincidence that he’d come out of the throne room at that moment, clearly in the middle of business, to apprehend them. If Quentin had been an evil son-of-a-bitch intent on controlling his family members with sinister magic, he certainly wouldn’t have wanted to discuss the matter in front of curious subjects.

For a moment, nobody seemed to know what to say or do. Nervous, Quentin took a step closer to Eliot, letting their arms brush together. He eyed everyone in the room, looking for the biggest threats. There was a very large part of him that wanted to grab Arielle and tug her out of the room, ignore the protests from the imposing figure in front of them, and run away, back to a world and a life that made sense. Both Taseer and Arielle were still shaking with adrenaline, pressed tight together and seemingly content to let Eliot and Quentin stand just slightly in front of them, like a shield. It was a position Quentin was happy to take, fury pounding in his blood right alongside fear and worry.

"I cannot allow you to leave," Toramond said, breaking the silence. His voice boomed with authority, as if he were calling a meeting to order. He pinned his glare directly onto Eliot and Quentin, as if _ they _were the real issue at hand. "You have breached the inner sanctum of this castle, you have interfered with the private goings on of my family - "

"Private goings on?" Eliot interrupted, repeating the words with the greatest incredulity. "You stole my best friend's soul from her, you took her choices away, and you did it to your nephew too!"

Toramond's somewhat ruddy face became even more splotchy, and his eyebrows narrowed over bloodshot eyes. He glanced briefly to either side of him, taking in the small crowd of people who were witness to this conversation. The authority in his voice had slipped a notch when he spoke again. "I do what I must to protect Fillory, young man. You have no idea the sacrifice, the work required to do what I do."

Quentin darted a hand out and grabbed Eliot's wrist hard, on instinct. He could feel the lines of tension roiling through his partner, knew how badly Eliot wanted to burst out with exactly how much he _ did _ know about Toramond's position, about how to rule this kingdom. Eliot shot him a glance and twitched his head forward into a slight nod, acknowledging the restraining hand.

"None of that matters," Quentin said, as firm and calm as he could manage. "We don't want anything to do with you, with your kingdom. We just want to go home, and I want to take my family with me."

From just behind him, Quentin heard Taseer let out a small, strangled sound, and when he turned to meet his eyes, saw the gratitude shining in them. Yes, Quentin was including Taseer in his claim of family. Yes, he'd come here for Arielle, but now, knowing what he did, he'd be damned if he didn't get Taseer out of there as well. He nodded at Taseer, and Taseer gave Quentin a shaky smile, almost apologetic. Maybe it would be the easy thing, to blame Taseer for getting Arielle, and thus Quentin and Eliot, embroiled in this mess. But Quentin knew all about family. The good and the bad.

"Will you stop us, if we try to leave?" Taseer asked. He still seemed shaky and unmoored, nothing like the confident and suave man that Quentin had so admired when he’d first met him. Arielle wasn’t speaking at all. They both seemed slightly more composed than they had immediately after the spell had been broken, but not by much. Quentin tried to imagine how it must feel. The best descriptor he could come up with was _ off kilter_. He felt dizzy enough as it was, his adrenaline spiking high with the need to do something - fight, flight, or otherwise. He could only imagine it would be worse to be coming out of a haze, only now aware of months without free will.

Toramond shifted slightly in his chair, as if to stand up, but then he decided against it. There were several feet between them, but Quentin was hyper-aware of the guards standing just behind Toramond, and the others waiting by the door. If they did just turn around and start running, would they be physically attacked? Were he and Eliot powerful enough to fight their way out of the castle? Maybe, but there was no way of knowing exactly what they were up against. There could be other magic users in the Pickwicks' employ that they just didn't know about, and even if there weren't, the numbers were not on their side. Whoever had cast the spell, at least, had been powerful enough to do real magic. Taseer seemed certain the sorcerer had only been a man for hire, but could they trust that Taseer knew the full truth?

“I should, by all rights, punish these interlopers for daring to trespass,” Toramond said, waving a hand in Quentin and Eliot’s directions. He pinned his gaze on his nephew. “But if you agree to _ behave yourself _ moving forward, I suppose I can let _ them _ leave.”

The emphasis on ‘_them_’ wasn’t lost on Quentin, but he was distracted from Taseer’s heated, desperate response by Eliot’s grip on his elbow. He leaned down, lips brushing Quentin’s earlobe. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not fucking leaving here without them.”

“Of course not,” Quentin said back, trying not to move his lips too much.

“Okay, I have a plan,” Eliot said. “But it comes with some risk.”

“More than we’ve already taken?”

“Fair point. Trust me?”

“Like you even need to ask.”

Eliot gave Quentin’s elbow another squeeze, this time in affectionate acknowledgment, and then stood up straight, coughing and taking a step forward so he was angled in front of Taseer, staring Toramond down. “We’re not interlopers.”

He hadn’t spoken loudly, but Eliot had a voice that cut through crowds. There was an authority to it, a calm measure of self-assuredness that Quentin had never been able to pull off. The room fell silent. Toramond’s guards shifted their focus minutely, training their eyes on Eliot instead of Taseer.

“What?” Toramond barked out, eyes narrowed in impatient fury.

“I said,” Eliot repeated. “We’re not interlopers. That’s what you just called us.” He tilted his head to encompass Quentin as well, and then squared his shoulders. “The fact of the matter is, I have a better claim to be here than anyone else in this room.”

Oh.

Oh, _ shit_.

Quentin fought to keep his face smooth, ignoring the startled expression on Arielle’s face, seen out of the corner of his eye. He knew what Eliot had meant now, about this plan coming with risks.

“You dare to interrupt me - ” Toramond began, but Eliot smiled and raised a hand, and Toramond snapped back the rest of the sentence, swallowing in apparent disgust.

“I dare,” Eliot said, his smile widening. Quentin pointedly ignored a stirring of arousal low in his gut, focusing instead on keeping his own posture as kingly as he could manage. He was out of practice. He’d never been _ in _ practice, in fact. Sure, he’d once been a King of Fillory. But Eliot was the regal one. “I dare, as High King of Fillory.”

The reaction in the room was like a crowd scene in a Shakespearean drama. A few of the guards bristled and tightened their grips on their weapons. Toramond finally stood, nearly stumbling in his haste to get to his feet, the blood draining from his face. There were gasps from some of Toramond’s retinue, and Quentin noticed Toramond shoot a nervous glance at the crowd of people watching. The public had been shut out, but there were still too many people in this room to really count it as private.

“That is not a claim to be made lightly,” Toramond said, his voice higher than before. Quentin noticed his hands curl into slow fists at his side as he fought for composure. “Do you have proof of this _ outrageous _ \- ”

Eliot took the hand that was still outstretched in front of him and flicked his fingers around, almost lazy. A candlestick sitting on the runner to the side of the chamber suddenly shot into the air, flying across the expanse and into Eliot’s hand. He pushed it off and it floated up like a balloon, hovering, its tiny flame flickering madly in the air currents of the room. “Point one, I can do magic,” Eliot said.

“Point two,” Quentin said, taking a step forward to stand next to Eliot. He’d gotten over his shock, and it was suddenly clear to him that he didn’t want to let Eliot do this alone. “I crowned him. We’re both Children of Earth. I’m a King of Fillory as well.”

More gasps, more theatrics. Quentin felt a hand on his shoulder: Arielle, squeezing hard. He didn’t know if the gesture was meant as warning or support, but it was a little too late to back out now.

“Magic is - ” Toramond cleared his throat, schooling his face into something approaching stern reproach. “Magic is no proof of anything, you do realize. That - that is merely a paltry _ parlor _ trick. I have more than one person in my employ who can do just the same.”

“Oh, I’m sure you have magic users. But not like what we can do,” Eliot said, shrugging and letting the candlestick float back down to rest in its original spot. “I can understand you’d be reluctant to take my word for it. We could always go ask the Knight of Crowns, if you feel it necessary.”

Toramond’s lips pursed, and Quentin bit down on the absurd urge to laugh, remembering their distant impromptu coronation on the beach. His heart ached for Margo and Alice, and even Penny. If only they could have been here for this.

“No, I’m serious,” Eliot continued, looking around the room as if someone had argued with him. “Ask me about Swayze. I might be a little rusty, but I can still pull out a speech or two. Q, go sit in the corner so I can rescue you and call you Baby.”

“Wrong century, El,” Quentin said, smiling. He could sense the waves of confusion coming off of Taseer and Arielle both. They were used to the odd Earth references, but the circumstances hardly seemed appropriate for the nearly jocular tone that had crept into Eliot’s words.

But Quentin understood. He could tell from Toramond’s facial expression that Eliot’s gamble was paying off. Toramond looked furious, yes. But he also looked terrified. His claims for power, his plans for his life and his son’s heritage, all went out the window if the fabled Children of Earth were really here to take over the ruling of Fillory.

“You haven’t the proof,” Toramond said, “And there is no reason why I should allow you to - that is to say, you’d need to prove yourself, and I shan’t let you.”

There was a shifting of the energy in the room. Toramond seemed to realize he’d just betrayed a weakness, and the guards stirred uneasily, their eyes bouncing from Toramond to Eliot, unsure of where to focus.

“You shan’t _ let _ me,” Eliot repeated, just a hint of mockery in his tone. _ Don’t overdo it, El_, Quentin thought, bunching a hand up at his side. _ Bring it home_. “I suppose I think it’s rather presumptuous for you to think you have the authority or ability to _ let _ me do anything at all. But I’ll tell you something that might set your mind at ease.”

Eliot paused, long enough to look over his shoulder at Taseer and Arielle, and then directly at Quentin. He smiled, confident and loving all at once, and then returned his gaze to Toramond. “The thing is, I don’t want to be king.”

Toramond shifted uncomfortably on his legs, clearly startled. Quentin could see his throat spasm as he swallowed down on his surprise, unsure how to continue. Eliot was still talking, though.

“In fact, I think it’s bullshit that something in my blood says I’m allowed to just take the throne whenever I want. I have a life I love, and I’d dearly like to get back to it. But if you don’t cooperate, I’ll do what needs to be done.” He paused once more, turning to look at Quentin and then back to Toramond, clearing his throat. “So the way I see it, there’s two options here. One, I take the throne, as is my birth right, and Fillory finds itself no longer in need of your services. You’ll be miserable, your son will have no future, and frankly I’ll be really, really irritated. Option two, I leave you alone, you get on with your life as before, and we never speak of this again.”

For a split second, Quentin thought the gamble had already paid off. Toramond looked nearly _ meek_, like he was about ready to curl up in his measly not-a-throne chair in this big, cavernous room, and ignore the past several minutes as a fluke. But there was a hint of steel in his gaze that told Quentin he still had a few more rounds left in him. “You can hardly expect me to let my direct competition out of here alive.”

“Again, it’s almost cute that you think you can take me,” Eliot said, without missing a beat. It was quite the bluff, but Eliot had the charisma to pull it off. “Go ahead and kill me, then - but just know you’ll have to kill every single person in this room, including your nephew here. Seeing as how you were unwilling to do that in the first place, something tells me you’re not the wholesale-slaughter type of ruler.” He paused again, for effect. “Not that you deserve particular props for that.”

“I’m popular with the people,” Taseer said, speaking up unexpectedly. He still kept himself just behind Quentin and Eliot, letting them take the lead and form a screen. “He’s right, uncle. If you kill the High King and word gets out, they will turn on you. And the only way to keep this silent is to kill me and everyone else in this room right now. I beseech you not to cause more pain than you already have.”

“But you are _ popular _ with the _ people_,” Toramond said, repeating Taseer’s words back to him with a hint of a whine. “That is just the point, don’t you see? How can I maintain my claim to rule when I know everyone would drop me for you if given half the chance?”

Quentin watched a couple of the courtiers clustered near Toramond exchange wry glances. Toramond was going to have to dip into the kingdom’s coffers to pay off the silence of this many witnesses. At the moment, he seemed too caught up in deep-rooted family insecurities to pay his audience much mind.

"You’re missing the important fact that I don't want to rule any more than Eliot does,” Taseer said, his voice steely and calm. "I want to marry this woman, and I want to dote on her and on my future step-son. If you want me to help you, be a figure in your government, I will. But if you truly view me as such a threat, I will disappear. I will live the humble life of a private citizen, as I've already told you I would. What I will not accept is your interference in my private choices."

“The people will think I’ve had you sent away.”

“The _ people _ will get over it!” Taseer snapped, the last vestiges of his patience flying away from him. Quentin knew why Toramond feared Taseer’s popularity, his charisma. He carried an authority in the carriage of his body, the tenor of his voice. He and Eliot had that in common. “I will fade into obscurity, nothing but a loyal vassal to your continued stewardship of this kingdom. Frankly, Toramond, I should _ kill _ you for what you’ve done to me and the woman I love. But I’m willing to let it all go, if you just permit us to walk away.”

It was the double effect, Quentin thought, of Taseer’s ultimatum paired with Eliot’s, that finally broke Toramond Pickwick.

All he’d wanted, Quentin now understood with a rush of dizzying anger, was control. Nothing more than that. His wasn’t a plot to take over the world, to topple nations and bring crowds of subjects to their knees. He was jealous of his charismatic nephew, was threatened by his confidence and intelligence, and he had sought to box him off in the corner where he could be used when useful, and ignored when not. And Arielle had just been an incidental feature, nothing more than a pretty pawn in a petty game.

Quentin’s whole family had been torn apart because a weak man with far too much access to power had decided he didn’t want to deal with any unwanted turmoil.

There was nothing more to say, of course - Taseer quietly declared that they would be gathering their things, and taking their horses and a carriage as some small form of restitution for the time and dignity they had lost. Toramond made stilted offers that his nephew should feel free to visit as a loyal advisor at any time, but should feel no obligation to continue his active service. It was the most coded way Quentin had ever heard anyone be banished. He wanted Toramond to understand, in that moment, the harm he had done. He wanted to burn the guilt of it into him, leave him to stew in his own pathetic inadequacies for as long as he lived. This story would be forgotten. Nobody, one hundred years from now, would remember this ancestor of Tick Pickwick’s and his meddling, malicious tactics. It was infuriating. Quentin found himself angrier now that the danger had passed than he had been the whole time Eliot and Taseer had been arguing for their freedom.

Eliot actually had to tug him out of the room, as Quentin was finding it difficult to contemplate just _ leaving _ like this. Leaving Toramond his kingdom, his power, even his _ dignity _ for the most part. All he had to do was tell people that Taseer and Arielle had decided to move out of the castle, and he’d face virtually no consequences for his actions. All he had to do was shell out some gold to the guards and hangers-on who had witnessed the confrontation.

How was that fair? How was that right? Quentin didn’t often have the urge to lash out, cause pain, but he found himself acutely wishing for some form of vengeance in that moment. It was only when Eliot put an arm tight around his shoulders and whispered to him - “they’re traumatized, Q. We need to get them out of here - ” that the anger fled from him, leaving him exhausted and relieved in equal measure.

Outside in the courtyard, the shock of daylight was invigorating - a reminder that the world was more than the inside of Whitespire. A reminder that after everything, they’d reached the end of their quest. Now it was only a matter of getting Ari and Taseer out of here, somewhere they could heal.

It was - over.

“Let’s go,” Arielle said, brittle and quick. “They said we can take a cart, let’s just - ”

“We have time now,” Eliot reminded her, gentle. “You can go back and get your stuff if you want.”

“There’s nothing that matters,” Arielle said. And Quentin heard the rest of the thought in his head, as if she’d spoken aloud. _ There’s nothing that matters except getting home to Teddy_.

“There is one thing,” Taseer said, gentle. “You three go and get the horses, and prepare to take off. I’ll meet you at the stables.”

Arielle went even more pale than she already was, shaking her head and compressing her lips. “No, I don’t know if that’s a good idea - ”

“I’ll return to you, my love. I promise.” Taseer cupped a hand against Arielle’s cheek and kissed her, tenderness in every line of his body. Quentin wondered suddenly if they’d even been able to love each other, to feel the affection and passion between them, cut off from their souls for so long. Had their partnership become nothing more than the stuff of habit, subject to Toramond’s control?

Arielle looked after Taseer as he jogged away, her eyes shining with tears.

“Come on, Ari. Let’s go get everything ready,” Eliot said, gentle. He put a hand on her back and steered her, the way he’d steered Quentin so often when he was coming out of a depressive episode, a loving guide back towards normalcy.

“We shouldn’t separate,” Arielle said, but she went where Eliot steered, biting her lip and glancing over her shoulder at where Taseer had gone. “Where is he going?”

Quentin had no answer for her. He and Eliot met eyes and shrugged at one another as they looped around the courtyard towards the small stables kept close to the walls of the castle itself. Only a small number of horses and carriages were housed here, meant for the personal use of the consul and his family. Taseer’s horses were easy to find, and they met with no resistance as Arielle told a stableboy to get the horses hitched to a carriage for immediate departure.

“I’m trusted around here. They’ve all been told to listen to my orders,” Arielle explained. Then her expression clouded over. “Of course, they haven’t really been my orders at all.”

“It’s okay now,” Quentin said, the empty platitude heavy on his tongue. “It’s all okay.”

“You just - left Teddy?” Arielle asked, worried but not accusatory. “Is he with my parents?”

“Yes,” Eliot said, patient. “Q’s right, Ari. It’s all going to be okay now. We’re going home, and we’ll figure out the rest as we go.”

“I just stood there,” Arielle said, staring off into the distance like she was seeing something the others could not. “I stood there and I smiled and nodded like a puppet.” She shook her head, then finally focused her gaze on Quentin and Eliot. “It’s like I’m feeling all of the things I _ should _ have been feeling this whole time, all at once.”

Quentin winced. It reminded him somewhat of how he felt climbing out of depression. Not that he felt _ nothing _ while he was at his worst, but there was a certain numbness to it, and waking up again to the full breadth and depth of emotion always hurt, like pins and needles from the inside out.

“How - ” Arielle coughed, changing the subject with another sharp shake of the head. “How did you beat the magic? How did you get us out?”

“Long story,” Eliot said, with a twist of the mouth. “Long, _ long _ story, my dear. We’ll tell you everything on the way home.”

Arielle was on edge, her head on a swivel for every approaching set of footsteps, until nearly twenty minutes later, when Taseer reappeared. He was carrying a small bag over one shoulder, and a sheaf of papers in his hands. “Just a few things from our rooms,” he said, handing the bag to a stablehand who moved to stow it in the carriage. “And this.” He waved the parchment in the air, an actual smile forming on his face. It made him look more like the Taseer that Quentin was used to. “We went through quite a bit of trouble playing by the rules,” Taseer said, taking Arielle’s hand and squeezing it. “I figured there was no reason we couldn’t reap at least one benefit of our cooperation.”

Taseer offered the papers to Quentin, who took the stack, bewildered. It only took a quick glance to tell him what he had in his hands. “Divorce papers,” he said, looking at Arielle. “For us, Ari.”

She looked over his shoulder, down at the document. Their names were both upon the paper, and court officials had signed off on the legal separation. “Oh,” she said, soft. “Oh, well, I suppose - ” she looked at Quentin anxiously, as if she was worried he was suddenly going to change his mind or pitch a fit. “I had forgotten.”

“Me too,” Quentin said. That wasn’t precisely accurate, but it was true enough that he’d ceased to think of Arielle as his wife a long time ago, even if he’d known it to still be true legally. “It’s been an honor, Ms. Ashmore.”

“Oh, Quentin,” Arielle said, uncharacteristically weepy. She threw herself forward into his arms. “I love you.”

“I know,” Quentin said, smoothing a hand into her hair. “I love you too.”

“There’s more,” Taseer said, and Quentin pulled away from Arielle to look at him. There was no hint of jealousy or concern on his face at having witnessed their embrace. Quentin felt bad for ever having doubted him. He flipped to the second piece of parchment in his hands, his eyes scanning the words.

“Oh,” Quentin said, suddenly choked up. “Oh, my God. Taseer, how did you…”

“Before my choices were stolen from me, I had arranged…” Taseer shrugged, a pleased smile on his face. “I had meant it to be a surprise, and I had meant to wait until after I proposed to you properly, darling,” he said, offering Arielle a somewhat sad smile. “But things were obviously derailed.”

Speechless, Quentin handed the paper to Eliot, who took it and then gasped, his hand tightening on the page. “I’m gonna cry,” he said, like a warning.

“Way ahead of you,” Quentin said, choked.

“Is anyone going to fill me in?” Arielle said, an eyebrow raised as she shifted to stand between Quentin and Eliot, so she could read the words clutched in Eliot’s hands. “_ Oh_,” she gasped. “Oh, Taseer, that’s _ lovely_.”

“If there are no objections,” Taseer said, the tiniest bit uncertain. “I shouldn’t like to presume that I have any natural right, you needn’t sign it - ”

“Of course we’ll sign it,” Quentin said at once.

“Yes, we’ll all sign it, and then we’ll all - ” Eliot started, and then cut himself off with a shuddering breath. “Goddamn, this is… I’m… I don’t even know what to say.”

Quentin looked at Eliot’s face, his glassy eyes and trembling lips, and remembered what he knew of Eliot’s tumultuous childhood. The years he’d spent with nobody who really loved him, nobody to watch out for him. Quentin had had his own issues with neglectful parents, but he’d at least always had his father on his side.

It has always been a point of pride for him that his own son had such a loving and supportive community at his back. It had hardly seemed to matter that in legal terms, only Quentin and Arielle had guardianship rights over Teddy, as his parents. The rest was implied, and in a rural society like Fillory, Eliot’s right to care for the boy he’d raised as his own would hardly have come into question.

But even if it was only a formality, a legal gesture, the words on the page still clutched in Eliot’s hands made Quentin’s heart swell with pride and gratitude. Nobody could argue with such a declaration from Whitespire itself, and that meant that no matter what happened, Teddy had more than just the two legal parents to guide him through his life.

Theodore Rupert Coldwater-Waugh had four.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheesy? Yes. Am I sorry? NO.


	21. Chapter Twenty-One - In Which Teddy's Parents Come Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe there are only two more chapters after this... it's going to be hard to say goodbye to this story!
> 
> Thank you as always for sticking along for the ride.

**ELIOT**

The journey back home, after everything that had happened in the intervening weeks, was more than a little surreal. For one thing, without the constant detours, the need for caution, the lack of horses, etc., the journey was only six days long. In comparison to the weeks Eliot and Quentin had spent on the move, it felt like nothing.

But there was also a new impatience to everything. The finish line had always been to get Arielle back, and they’d _ done _ that, which just meant that now, the only thing that Eliot could think about was getting home to his son. It had shifted from an ember of longing to a bright, vibrant need. It suddenly seemed absolutely impossible that he’d missed over a month of Teddy’s life, an entire stretch of days and nights that he’d never get back.

And if he was feeling impatient to get back to him, it was nothing to Arielle’s own eagerness.

“I didn’t say anything to him, though, right?” she asked Quentin, an anxious lilt to her tone. “I don’t think I ever saw him when I was - when I was _ like that_, did I?”

“No,” Quentin said, reassuring. He and Arielle were both up in the cart, while Taseer and Eliot were mounted beside them. They’d been swapping off who got to sit in the carriage, at Arielle and Taseer’s insistence. Quentin had been in favor of letting them have the comfortable journey the whole way back, but despite their rattled nerves, they were both physically in perfect shape. There really was no nursing back to health that needed doing.

“What does Teddy think? Where does he think I’ve been?” Arielle asked, single-minded and tearful.

It had been like this all day, Arielle looping back around to questions about Teddy, Quentin being patient and comforting. Taseer was taciturn and wide-eyed, still apparently in the midst of processing what had been done to him, and his own ultimatum up at the palace. And as for Eliot’s own state of mind, it was taking everything in him not to gallop ahead and race full-tilt for home, leaving the others to follow. He and Q had even talked about it, considered sending someone ahead to get to Teddy as quickly as possible. But at the end of the day, none of them were keen on being separated from the others. There was a skittishness to Arielle and Taseer both, as they went back and re-processed every decision they had made in the last two months, every word they had spoken, every action they had taken. Eliot tried to imagine what it felt like for both of them, and couldn’t.

At night, he and Quentin lay curled up together and pretended not to hear as Arielle and Taseer held each other equally tight, whispering apologies and tearfully recounting what had happened to them, with proper context newly restored. From what they were willing to talk about in the light of day, it appeared that Toramond had left them mostly alone (thank god), but had forced them to publicly endorse his every decision, smiling and waving like the puppets they had become. At some point, Taseer had also given his uncle an easy promise to never have children, so that no offspring of his would prove competition to Toramond’s own direct line. With a shudder of horror, Taseer recalled that there had been talk of a medical procedure, something to prevent him from fathering offspring, but it had never happened, Toramond growing complacent the longer he had his nephew docile and cooperative.

“And you’re cool with giving all that up?” Quentin had asked Taseer much later, on their fifth day of travel. Eliot was listening from up in the cart, where he was sitting with Arielle, her head against his shoulder while she dozed fitfully. She wasn’t sleeping well at nights, and Eliot was just grateful for any moment of rest for her.

“I would not say I’m ‘cool’ with anything that has happened lately,” Taseer said, contemplative and dour. He looked like royalty on horseback, a striking and regal contrast to Quentin’s own barely-competent riding. Eliot smiled to himself even as he listened anxiously to Taseer’s words. “I’ve never been very keen on having kids. I suppose that’s a conversation for myself and Arielle to have later on, now that I have… now that I will no longer be…”

“But that’s what I’m asking,” Quentin said, pressing yet still gentle. “I know you never exactly liked politics, but being a Pickwick, belonging to that family… it was important to you. I know it was.”

“If it were a matter of giving it up only to be with Arielle...” Taseer said, looking up into the carriage and smiling softly at the sight of Arielle in slumber. Eliot smiled back, going for reassuring. “I would have done it. She’s worth that to me. But it’s more than that, of course. I might not be delighted at the thought of abandoning my birthright, the plan my own honored father had for me and my life before his passing. But I cannot abide the thought of cooperating with my uncle any longer. It’s better for everyone involved if I cut ties with him. If I’d done so sooner, I could have spared - ” he cut himself off, his face going dark. Eliot could see his jaw bunched tight, and he met Quentin’s gaze, twisting his mouth in pained sympathy. A part of him wanted to jump in and offer comfort, but Quentin really was better with that kind of thing.

“It could have been so much worse,” Quentin said, which… okay, not exactly the tactic Eliot would have expected him to take. “Your uncle didn’t ask you to do anything horrendous. He could have had you going around murdering people, or - ”

“Quentin,” Taseer said. There was a hint of amusement in his voice, and the sound of it warmed Eliot’s heart. “That is actually not a helpful thing to say.”

Quentin huffed out a breath of laughter and brought a hand up to brush through his hair. Eliot wanted to be touching him. It was strange, to suddenly be coexisting with other people again, after so long with just the two of them on the quest. “No, what I mean is… what your uncle was forcing you to do was basically what you would have had to be doing anyway, if you stayed in that life.”

“What do you mean?” Taseer asked.

“I _ mean_,” Quentin said, “that your uncle’s the consul. His son is his heir. The most you ever could have hoped for is an advisory position, and like you said, with your uncle being the way he is, there was never hope for an actual meaningful role in policy decisions. Not with him in charge. He wanted you to be a yes man, and short of that, nothing was ever going to work out.”

Taseer appeared to be considering this. Eliot couldn’t see his face clearly from where he was sitting, but after a moment Taseer huffed out a laugh, shaking his head and casting a side-long look at Quentin. “Apparently, yes man or no, Eliot has the power to take it all with the snap of his fingers.” Taseer wasn’t speaking to Eliot, but he seemed to be aware that Eliot was listening, tilting his head meaningfully in his direction as he spoke.

“No, but that’s all crap, though,” Quentin said immediately, waving a hand. “I mean - it’s _ not_, it’s like - weird Fillorian magic, but what I mean is that if anyone has the - the _ right _ to depose your dickhole of an uncle, it’s definitely you, not El.”

“So you’re really the Children of Earth, then,” Taseer mused. “I suppose it never really hit me, what that could mean, until…”

“It’s a moot point,” Quentin said, still dismissive. “That’s not our life, that’s not why we’re here. We’ve got different goals now, than we did back then.”

Eliot kept half an ear on Taseer’s answer, and on the conversation as it continued between them, as Taseer asked probing questions and Quentin was forced to admit that he and Eliot didn’t actually have any special knowledge that could bring Fillory into a new age of prosperity. Eliot was completely at peace when it came to the whole question of his bloodright. None of that felt like reality - he’d only ever brought it up as a bargaining tool against Toramond. The thought of abandoning the mosaic to go live in Whitespire _ now_, of having to deal with a kingdom he could never fully understand… no. That was another time, another place. It wasn’t who he was anymore.

Eliot was pulled entirely away from Quentin and Taseer’s back and forth by the feeling of Arielle stirring against him, her soft voice sounding in his ear.

“Hey, Eliot?”

“Good morning, my dear,” Eliot said, turning his head to drop a kiss against her forehead. “Sleep well?”

“Your shoulder is very bony,” she said, and it was such an _ Arielle _ thing to say that Eliot’s heart leapt for joy. “But yes, I did, despite that.”

“You’ll be seeing your son tomorrow,” Eliot said, and he’d meant it to be encouraging, but he felt Arielle go tense against him.

“Yes, about that…” Arielle said. “Eliot, I need you to know that I’m going to be really clingy for a little while. To you and Quentin, I mean.”

“Okay,” Eliot said immediately, tightening his arm around her. “God, whatever you need, Ari. Always.”

“My instinct is to grab Teddy and never let him go, but I want to be - I don’t want to scare him. I’m… I’m shaken up by everything. It’s going to take me awhile to get my equilibrium back, so I think I’m going to be needy and demanding and I’m going to put that on you and Quentin, so I don’t put it on him.”

“Okay,” Eliot repeated, this time more cautious. “Ari, I get what you’re saying, I do. It’s like when Q gets sick, he doesn’t want to burden Ted with any of that stuff. But Teddy’s a smart kid, and people his age are resilient. I get that you don’t want to dump all of your trauma on him, but he’ll see through it if you try to act like nothing happened.”

Arielle groaned, tipping her head backwards and looking up at the sky as if seeking answers. “It’s just not fair to him that this happened, you know? It’s not fair that I had to miss months of his life, that he had to miss _ me_, and you and Quentin had to leave him.”

“You’re right, it’s not fair. It fucking sucks,” Eliot said, stroking a hand down her back. “But we won, okay? We fucking beat the universe and its unfair bullshit, and we’re not going to let it drag us down after the fact.”

Arielle turned her face to look at him, an eyebrow raised. “You sound like you’re talking about more than me and my trauma, now.”

“Well, Taseer too,” Eliot said, dodging. But Arielle had never, ever, let him or Q get away with shit like this. It was why they both loved her so much.

“And?” she prompted, nudging him. Eliot turned to look back at Quentin and Taseer, who had wandered slightly farther away from the carriage in the natural rhythm of their horse’s walk. He studied the dark circles under Taseer’s eyes, the way his hair was mussed from sleep, then looked at Quentin, who seemed as healthy and carefree as one could expect, given the days of rough living and constant travel. He knew it was something of an illusion. Quentin probably did feel okay right now, but shit was going to catch up with him. It was going to catch up with all of them.

“The quest,” Eliot said finally, sighing and turning back to Arielle. “It brought up some stuff. For both of us. We… there were some close calls.”

Arielle frowned, her eyes scanning his face. “Close calls how?”

Eliot blinked, trying to clear the memories out of his head, but it was hard to ignore the fact that just a few days ago, Quentin had been twitching and shuddering in agony on the floor of the witch’s cottage, while he had been utterly powerless to help. And only a couple of weeks before that, he’d plummeted off the side of the ravine. And that wasn’t even to mention Eliot’s own close call with the poisonous flowers, or the dozens of other things that could have gone wrong, in between all of the near misses. “Um,” he said, ineloquent and tongue-tied, fighting for calm. “We both almost died a few times, trying to break you out of there.”

Arielle made a sound in the back of her throat, and then pulled away from Eliot, rubbing both hands over her face. Eliot immediately missed the warmth of her against him. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, I didn’t - I don’t want to burden you with any of that, and I certainly don’t want you to feel guilty. It’s just - I need to be honest, because you’re going through it, and Taseer’s going through it, and me and Q are also - uh, going through it. Shit’s going to be rough for a while, and that’s just the reality.”

Despite their promises to tell Taseer and Arielle the whole story, Quentin and Eliot had actually both been pretty close-lipped about the specifics. It felt good to know that they had as much time as they needed to tell the whole story. And things felt too raw. It was important to Eliot that he talk with Quentin first, about what had happened, about how close they had both come, too many times, to losing everything.

And instead, he’d gotten more than he’d ever imagined. He and Quentin were safe and whole, and they’d rescued Arielle and Taseer. And there was a piece of paper in Taseer’s saddlebag right now that said -

Eliot blinked back against tears, overwhelmed as always when he thought about it. Teddy had always been his son. It shouldn’t have mattered. But so sue him if the thought of tangential proof filled him with an extra measure of warmth.

When they stopped for supper that night, there was an added sense of tension in the air, knowing that tomorrow, life was supposed to get back to normal. Somehow, impossibly, they were at journey’s end. For Eliot, it felt wonderful but also terrifying. He’d longed for nothing more than to return to the safety and routine of his familiar life, but everything looked different on the other side of so much trauma and uncertainty. He somehow couldn’t imagine himself going to work on the mosaic, getting up in the morning, warm and close to Q in their own bed, the sound of Teddy’s footsteps pattering around in his room next door. That was the stuff of dreams. More than he could hope for.

He was pulled out of his daydreaming by the sound of Arielle letting out a strained laugh at something Quentin had just said. They were tucked together on the opposite side of the fire from Eliot and Taseer, conversing in low tones. “You can’t seriously be apologizing for that,” she said, sounding so much like her old self that Eliot had the urge to kiss her in gratitude and relief.

“Well,” Quentin said, frowning. “I mean - I just meant - ”

“Honey,” Arielle said, patronizing, “You risked your life to save me. You risked Eliot’s life, too.”

“What are you two whispering about over there?” Eliot said, shifting closer to the fire so he could see their expressions. Quentin’s face was turned down into a guilty frown, and Arielle was rolling her eyes.

“Your partner just finished apologizing to me for saving your life,” she said, huffing impatiently.

“Oh,” Eliot said, a little startled. “We’re talking about it, then.”

“Did you not want me to?” Quentin said, uncertain. “We said we’d tell them.”

“Sure,” Eliot said, nodding broadly and swallowing. “Yeah, Ari, since we’re sharing, you should know I nearly chucked the whole quest out on its ear a couple of times, myself. For Q.”

Eliot wasn’t about to apologize for it, though, no matter what Quentin had just said. He didn’t know how he ever would have moved past it, if he’d failed to save Arielle. But he still knew, ultimately, where his greatest priorities lay.

“I can’t say I blame you,” Taseer said, speaking unexpectedly from beside Eliot. He’d been taciturn ever since they had stopped to set up camp near a small copse of trees. He did his share in setting up, surprisingly comfortable with rough living for a man who grew up in a palace, but he wasn’t in a chatty mood. Both Taseer and Arielle acted like their old selves much of the time, but they’d flicker occasionally into a contemplative and anxious mindset, lost in thought. Eliot wondered if they’d ever pull themselves fully out of the mire, or if, like Rita, they’d carry what happened with them for the rest of their lives.

Taseer coughed, looking a bit awkwardly between the three of them over the flicker of the campfire. “I mean to say, I’d like to think I’d risk life and limb to protect my friends.” He nodded at Quentin and Eliot. “But I can’t say I’d be willing to risk _ her_. Not for anything.”

Arielle gave him a gushy, lovesick expression that Eliot might once have mocked.

“So we’re all on the same page about being hopeless romantics, willing to undergo any sacrifice to protect our one true loves,” Eliot said, adding in some overwrought drama to his voice, to stop it from feeling too true.

“Well, any sacrifice but one,” Arielle said, quiet and serious. She met Eliot’s eyes. “Teddy.”

“Yes,” Taseer said. “I suppose there is that one notable exception.”

“I think that’s probably what it all comes down to,” Quentin said, contemplative and soft. He nodded his head down to Taseer’s saddlebags, where their copies of the divorce and guardianship papers were resting. The official copies remained with a clerk in Whitespire, signatures fresh and stark against the parchment. “Us, the four of us. We’d all do anything for Teddy. No qualifiers, no exceptions.”

For a moment the four of them were silent. Eliot could _ feel _ Teddy between them, a pull towards home, a singular purpose that united them through everything. It had been a risk, Eliot knew even now, to go after Arielle, to risk himself and Quentin for the chance of bringing Teddy’s mother back to him. But they hadn’t taken that risk _ in spite _ of Teddy. They’d done it _ for _ him. And Eliot had stayed alive for Teddy, too. Quentin was enough to tether him to life, of course. But if Quentin owned his heart, that didn’t change the fact that Teddy _ was _ his heart. Not for the first time, Eliot wondered what his twenty-year-old self would have thought if he could have seen him now.

“I think that’s what the quest was trying to tell us,” Quentin continued, almost too quiet to hear over the chill breeze and crackling fire.

“What does that mean?” Taseer asked, curious. Eliot caught Quentin’s eye and smiled at the look of wry contemplation on his face. He knew what Quentin was thinking, even as he was curious to hear how he would answer. Explaining magic to someone who didn’t have it was always tricky. Explaining quest magic, _ nature _ magic, the magic of Fillory… well, that was difficult for more reasons than one.

“Well,” Quentin said finally, chewing on his lower lip. “I don’t really know what it means. But quest magic is… it’s always bigger than it seems. And the quest we’ve been on…” he stopped at looked at Eliot, clearly at a loss.

“It was definitely bigger than we expected,” Eliot said. “Everything happened more or less like we might have predicted, in some ways. We had to collect things, we had to face dangers, we had to risk our lives…”

“I’m sorry,” Taseer interrupted, his shoulders slumping in apparent exhaustion. He shook his head. “You went through so much - ”

“No,” Quentin said, cutting back in. “We’re not trying to say… okay, along the way, there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense, moments when by all rights we should have failed, but we _ didn’t_. And sitting here with you all now, it got me thinking about what kind of magic the quest actually needed from us, what kind of lesson it was actually trying to teach.”

“Ordinarily it would be fruitless to try and apply some sort of life lesson to actual experiences, but Fillory is just _ like that_,” Eliot said, half annoyed, half grateful to this strange place that had become his home in so many ways. “We won because we chose family every time.”

“Exactly,” Quentin said, nodding broadly, a smile lighting up his face. “The quest wasn’t looking for someone clever, someone who could outsmart a logic puzzle. Or someone powerful, someone who could use brute strength to save the day.”

“It was looking for love.” Eliot had been expecting the words from Quentin, so was startled to hear Arielle say them instead. “You went on this insane journey because you both love me. Because you love Teddy, and because you love each other. And that’s why it worked.”

There was a part of Eliot, an old part, still distrustful and broken even after all he had learned, that wanted to resist the truth of this. _ Magic comes from pain_. He’d believed it for so long, and maybe he still did, in a way. But the true thing, the real thing, was that magic wasn’t good or bad. It wasn’t pain or love. It was just _ magic_. It could be all of those things, or none of them. Eliot and Quentin and Arielle and Taseer and _ their son_, their son Teddy who they all loved and wanted to protect and cherish - _ that _ was why they had succeeded. Because sometimes the universe was actually a righteous place. Sometimes good people actually got what they deserved.

And if they never got real answers, if nobody ever explained the quest’s magic to them, it didn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter, not really, if they never solved the mosaic back home. All that mattered was that they’d never stop trying. All that mattered was that they had all found each other.

The following morning, they left early, while the sky overhead was still grey with the very beginnings of sunrise. The closer they got to home, the quieter the four of them became. There didn’t seem to be anything left to say. Every conversation Eliot knew they’d all have later, every fight and every breakdown, every moment of processing and coming to terms with the time they’d lost, the indignities and injuries they’d suffered, all of that paled in comparison to the nearness of home. Of Teddy.

Arielle let out a breathy, tear-filled gasp when their cart finally crested the hill above Langdale. The sight of the familiar village, nested in its valley, brought tears to Eliot’s eyes as well. He hadn’t let himself miss a lot of the familiar things, things like nights at the pub with his friends, market days with Teddy eagerly asking to buy something from every cart, the annual summer and winter festivals.

But they didn’t stop in town, of course. They kept going, urging the hardworking horses just that little bit faster, leaving the carriage in town so they could ride quickly out of the valley and up to the farmland beyond, to where Arielle’s family lived, to where their son waited for them.

“Do you think he’s awake?” Arielle asked when they were less than an hour from home.

“His grandmother isn’t going to let him become a layabout,” Eliot said. “I’m sure he was up with the sun, helping out with the chores.”

They saw Rodney Jr. first, running full-tilt towards their horses as they came in across the fields towards the main house, lifting Arielle up and off of her mount before a word had been spoken between them. He held her close, uncharacteristically quiet and solemn for the space of two seconds, but then set her down, smiling broad and open at the other three as they dismounted. “I want to hear everything.”

“Rodney - ” Quentin started, anxious as he looked over Rodney’s shoulder towards the house.

“No, no, I know,” Rodney said, waving a hand to cut Quentin off. “Later. He’s inside.”

They had been spotted from a distance, evidently - Arielle’s parents and assorted other family members were all waiting for them at the door, pulling the weary travelers inside, hugs and crying and loud questions all blending together until Eliot had the hysterical thought that he missed the quiet of the Violet Woodlands, the peaceful isolation of just him and Quentin against the rest of the world.

But the feeling of suffocation didn’t last long. Even as he was being pulled into an enthusiastic hug by Jack’s husband Leon, while Quentin attempted to explain in stuttering sentences to Mr. Ashmore that Taseer wasn’t the bad guy after all, and Arielle wept into her mother’s shoulder, there was a sound from the stairway just past the entrance to the farm house that brought everything up short.

_“Mommy_!” Teddy shouted, and there were footsteps, loud and ecstatic, clattering down the stairs. “Mommy! Daddy! Papa!”

It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing Eliot had ever heard.

* * *

They stayed at the Ashmore farm for three days, so Arielle could be around her family. It had taken a while to convince everyone that Taseer was innocent, another victim in Toramond’s scheme, but eventually the skittish, distrustful behavior ceased, and he was coddled right along with Arielle. Eliot was itching to be back home, alone with Q and Teddy, but there was something comforting about this too, being surrounded by Arielle’s family - by _ his _ family. Because they were his, and that in and of itself was not a gift to be taken lightly.

So they stayed, and they healed. They slept, they ate, they tried to remember what it was to not live on the move, to settle down and just _ exist_, without a concrete and immediate task in front of them. The mosaic still called, of course, and Eliot knew that he and Quentin would be back at work before too long, seeking the beauty of all life and hoping against hope that there was still a way for them to help their friends from a life before this one. It was a melancholy thought, but not cripplingly devastating. Eliot had made his choice, and he was content.

“I need to know, on a scale of one to ten, how angry you are,” Quentin said on their last evening at the farm. They were planning on heading back to the cottage the following morning; Arielle and Taseer were coming along as well. Nobody wanted to be away from Teddy right now. Q and Eliot had gone outside to wander around the farm, giving Arielle some time alone with her parents and son.

Eliot looked down at Quentin, startled, and answered without thinking. “I’m not angry.”

“El,” Quentin said, with a disbelieving raise of his eyebrows. “Come on. I just - I need to know what I’m working with, here. I know we’ve had more important things to focus on for a while, but not that we’re all safe, and back home… we need to talk about what happened with the witch, with… with what I did.”

Eliot pulled Quentin against his chest, partially to shut him up, and partially just to touch him. He knew what Quentin meant, knew why he wanted to initiate this conversation. They probably should talk about it. It was the right thing to do. In fact, Eliot was pretty sure he’d insisted on it, back in the immediate aftermath. “Q, I’m not angry,” Eliot repeated. “I mean that. I - at the time, I was - I think I picked _ angry _ because it felt like a cleaner emotion than anything else, but I was really just… _ scared_. So scared. I still am, honestly.”

“I know,” Quentin said. He brought his arms up and hugged them tight around Eliot’s back. They were near the stables, and Eliot could hear the sounds of some of the Ashmore’s hired hands, rubbing down the horses for a night’s rest. The ones they had taken from Whitespire were being cared for specially, given places among the horses already owned by the family. “I can’t possibly tell you enough, how sorry I am.”

“You didn’t know,” Eliot said, the admission a balm to his tender heart. “I know you didn’t mean… you didn’t know what would happen.”

“I still should have told you.”

“Yes,” Eliot said. “God, yes, you should have. But we - I don’t think either of us can really be expected to have acted rationally while we were off - questing, you know?” He paused for a moment, thinking through what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. “I think, Q, that we’ll probably have to keep talking about some stuff. For a while. But right now I just want to put it behind us, get back some semblance of _ normal_.”

“I want that too,” Quentin said. “I really want that. But I also don’t want to let this fester.”

Quentin had always been the brave one. Eliot sighed, closing his eyes and letting the scents and sounds of the stables wash over him. The association should have been unpleasant, but it didn’t remind him of childhood. It reminded him of the here and now, the comforts of the Ashmore farm, a place he counted nearly as dear as home.

“Okay,” Eliot said, and he pulled on Quentin’s arm to steer him over to the side of the stable so they could sit down, with their backs against something. “So, the thing is, I love you. I love you _ so _ much, and I think you’re pretty much the most perfect person to ever exist.”

Quentin sputtered at him, predictably bashful under the praise, and then nudged their shoulders together. “I’ve told you before, you’re biased.”

“But the other thing,” Eliot continued, swallowing hard around a lump in his throat, “Is… um.”

“El?” Quentin’s body was a warm comfort, pressed against his own. He took another fortifying breath and continued, forcing himself to wander through the threads of complicated emotions, to find the heart of his fear and anger. Quentin wanted to talk about this. Quentin deserved his honesty.

“If there’s one thing in this world that scares me more than losing you, it would be losing you to your own mind.”

Quentin pulled in a sharp breath, and his hand jumped up to curl around Eliot’s wrist. “I’m _ not _ suicidal, Eliot.”

“I believe you,” Eliot said. “I’d be slightly more worried if I thought we were in that kind of trouble, Q.”

_Worried_. Ha. Fucking understatement. But whatever. The point was - 

“The point is,” Eliot continued, because now that he’d started he should probably just say it all. “The point is, as much as I love you, it hurts me to know you can never see yourself the way I do. You can never _ know _ how - how _ valuable _ you are to me. Because your brain doesn’t want to let you believe that stuff about yourself. And it’s selfish, to make this about me, but I hate that so, _ so _ much, Quentin. I hate that you were in trouble and I was so scared and even after you were safe again, I couldn’t stop thinking _ what if he wants to die? _Over and over again in my head, in a loop. It’s not your fault, and I feel like a selfish motherfucker for even saying _ any _ of this out loud to you. But you said you didn’t want it to fester, so… there it is.”

There was more he could say, but he made himself be silent, so the words could sink in for both of them. He had the urge to keep explaining himself, to backpedal and tell Quentin not to worry about his stupid hangups. But that was hypocritical. Eliot wanted Quentin to share everything with him, even the dark, difficult stuff. What kind of partner would he be if he couldn’t reciprocate?

“Eliot,” Quentin said, slow and precise, like he was expending a great effort to keep his tone even. “Thank you. For telling me all of that.”

There was more, Eliot knew. He risked a glance over at Quentin, and saw him staring at the ground, his eyebrows pinched and his mouth turned down. Eliot swallowed and kept silent.

“You say that I can’t see myself, the way you see me,” Quentin finally continued. “And that’s true. But I think you need to realize that it goes both ways. The way I see you, what you are to me… you can’t possibly appreciate how important you are. Saying that I love you doesn’t even begin to cover it. And I can tell you that you’re the kindest, smartest, most beautiful person I’ve ever known, and I _ know _ you’ll resist it, that some part of you won’t believe you’re worthy of that kind of praise. We’re the same.”

“I don’t have a major depressive disorder,” Eliot said. He didn’t mean it as a rebuke, but it felt important to say. He understood what Quentin was getting at, but still. It was more than that, and they both knew it.

“Fair enough,” Quentin said, and Eliot felt him shift, squirming to get comfortable, their arms still pressed tight together. “But you had a panic attack when we were on the quest. You had more than one panic attack, actually. And I know the situation was… I know things were _ extreme_. I’m not saying I handled things any better than you did. But if we keep framing this like I have a broken brain and you’re the entirely healthy one, I think we’re doing both of us a disservice.”

Okay. Eliot struggled for a moment with the urge to defend himself, as if Quentin were making an accusation, but swallowed back on the words, letting them sink in. Okay. Yeah. “Fair enough,” Eliot echoed. “That’s. Not at all a bad point.”

“I’m trying as hard as I can, El,” Quentin said, the shrug audible in his voice.

“I know that,” Eliot said. “Fuck, Quentin, I’m not actually mad at you, you know? I’m mad because the thing I want more than anything in the world is to be able to help you, and I know that I can’t.”

“I know I’ve told you this a thousand times already,” Quentin said, soft and nearly tentative. “But you _ do _ help me. So fucking much, I can’t even - okay, listen.” Quentin shifted slightly, his spine straightening, and moved just an inch away so their arms were no longer touching. “You always say you want to know how I feel, right? And when - when I’m in a dark place, it can be - well, it can be really fucking dark, Eliot. You know that. When I’m better, I can remember how bad I felt, how pointless and stupid my whole life felt, but I can’t connect with that person, that person who would want to throw it all away, you know?”

Eliot shut his eyes, squeezing them tight. Quentin talked about his depression because he had to, and Eliot listened because he had to, but it was never easy. “Yeah, I understand. Or, I - get it, as best as I’m able.”

“It’s been years, honey,” Quentin continued, soft and gentle now, like Eliot was the one who needed comfort. “It’s been a long, _ long _ time since I’ve tried to - tried to end it. Before I even knew you, when I didn’t have magic, or… or a support system that was actually capable of being there for me, no matter how hard they tried.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know if this is going to help or hurt, but I can tell you the darkest thing I’ve thought since being in Fillory with you. The worst it’s ever gotten. The lowest of the low. The last time I was down, when it was - when it was really bad? I thought about how much better off you and Teddy would be without me. How if I was gone, your life would be easier, and - and I thought about trying to pretend I was better? So you’d let me go off on my own, let me leave, and - ”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“But I - I mean, when I’m like that I don’t really have the motivation to like… stand up? So obviously I wasn’t going to be able to pull something like that off, and I’m _ grateful_, El, that I didn’t. That I couldn’t. Because I get better, every time, and eventually I remember that, you know?”

“I’d never fucking recover,” Eliot said, the words spitting out fast and harsh. “If you did that. I’d never. _ Ever_. Recover.”

“I _ know,_” Quentin said. “God help me, I know. The point is, I thought that. But then I thought about how badly it would rip you apart to find me dead. And even though my brain was screaming at me that it would still be better for you in the long run, I couldn’t go through with it because I knew I’d be causing you pain. Even temporarily. In the moment, it was a selfish thought, because it felt like an excuse to avoid doing what’s right? But like - when it’s like that in my head, anything that stops me from doing something stupid is a good thing. And then weeks later I looked back and I’m just so fucking _ grateful _ that I decided to be selfish, and - ”

“Okay, can we stop?” Eliot said, eyes pricking, heart racing. “Sorry. Just. Can we stop?”

“El - ”

“No, I’m okay, I’m - I get it, it’s okay, I just need us to not talk about this for a second.”

There was a pause, a few seconds of uncertainty and tension between them. And then Quentin shifted, turning so he was pressing hard into Eliot’s side. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Eliot said, already smiling at what he knew Quentin was about to do. Sure enough, he found himself abruptly with a lapful of beautiful man, his lips captured in a slow, thorough kiss. It was a blatant and obvious attempt to distract him from the darkest of his thoughts, and Eliot decided to let it work, stroking his tongue in alongside Quentin’s, the warmth and wet of him an instant and familiar comfort. “Hi,” he said again, breathless, when Quentin pulled back just far enough to press their foreheads together, noses brushing.

“I’m here, I’m safe, I’m happy,” Quentin promised, his voice brushing warmth over Eliot’s face. Eliot squeezed his eyes shut, nodding and letting the words seep through his skin. He believed it. He believed it. He did. Or at least he _ would_, and he knew that. He’d keep believing it just as soon as he’d given himself time to get used to the fact that they were really both safe again, and that their son was inside, vibrant and happy and reunited with his parents. All of them.

“Me too,” Eliot promised Quentin right back, and Quentin kissed him again, sinking his body further into Eliot’s until Eliot could feel his heartbeat through their clothes, pressed up against his own. They stayed that way, kissing and then just breathing into each other, sharing air and riding on the simplicity and utter peace of gentle physical sensation.

After a while, Eliot found himself resting with his head tucked into Quentin’s shoulder, Q’s hands brushing distracting and comforting patterns along his back, under his shirt. “Can we head out early in the morning?” Eliot asked, the words coming out without thought. “I want to go home.”

“Yeah, of course,” Quentin said, one hand coming up out of the tangle of Eliot’s shirt to brush through his curls instead. Then he huffed out a laugh, his lips whispering against Eliot’s temple. “When we first got here and saw that rundown cottage in the middle of a clearing, and that angry old man stormed off to leave us to our fates… did you ever think you’d be _ longing _ to return there?”

“Fuck, no. Then again, I thought we’d be there a handful of days at the most. Do you ever think about that guy?”

“Yeah, actually. Who do you think he was?” Quentin asked, but before Eliot could think of an answer, a new voice broke in on their conversation.

“Quentin. Eliot.”

They pulled away from each other enough to look up. Eliot squinted in the darkness as the small and wiry frame of Rita Ashmore approached out of the darkness. Her eyes took in the two of them, Quentin sitting in Eliot’s lap, their hair ruffled, lips swollen. A bubble of amusement appeared in Eliot’s chest. He thought about telling Rita that they actually hadn’t been having sex out by the barn, but whatever. He had no shame, and it was fun to watch Quentin squirm.

“Oh. Hello, Rita,” Quentin said, climbing awkwardly out of Eliot’s lap on legs that had clearly fallen asleep. Eliot bit his lip to stop from laughing, standing as well.

“It’s late, are you staying at the house?” Eliot asked politely. They’d seen Rita the morning after their return, but unlike Ari’s brothers, she had made herself scarce after saying hello and assuring herself that Arielle was alright.

“I was actually looking for the two of you,” Rita said, something approximating a smile on her face. “There’s something I wish to show you.”

Eliot stole a glance at Quentin, who raised an eyebrow at him and shrugged.

They followed Rita as she walked away from the Ashmore house, back towards her own abode near the opposite side of the large farm property. For a while there was silence, Quentin and Eliot slowing their natural paces so as to stay with Rita. She was surprisingly quick and steady for a woman of her age, and the silence was actually not as awkward as Eliot would have expected. There was a kinship between them, a unity that Eliot knew came from shared trauma. It was one of the silver linings of such things, that it forged bonds, created love and belonging out of tragedy. That was basically the story of Eliot’s friendship with Q, after all - before key quests, before Fillory, they had been united by war and conflict and grief and fear.

And now they were united with Arielle’s withered yet still fierce aunt, as she strode with a straight spine and head held high away across a broad expanse of field. Eventually, without prompting, she explained herself. “I want to introduce you to my Bella, if you wouldn’t mind indulging an old woman’s foolish sentiment.”

The community’s local cemetery was a small one, but old, too. Eliot had never been inside before, although he’d passed it on the rare occasions he’d come this way to visit Rita, or on his way to Arnold’s family roost.

“Generations of Langdale families are buried here,” Rita said with some measure of pride, as she led the way through the rows of headstones towards a spot in the center. “Bella was actually from a few towns over originally, but she wanted to be laid to rest here. I’ll go right there beside her, when I’m bones,” she continued as they approached a well-maintained headstone. There was an empty space next to it, and Rita’s eyes lingered there for a moment, like a part of her was already there beneath the earth.

Eliot shivered, taking a step closer to Quentin. It didn’t bear thinking about, how close he had come to living without the better part of his soul. He imagined himself looking down at Quentin’s name on a headstone some day, old and sad and alone, and he reached a hand out to rest it on Quentin’s arm, the press of warm skin under his fingers suddenly a necessity.

He didn’t know what to say, and neither, it seemed, did Quentin.

_Isabella Dunn Ashmore. Beloved_.

Eliot hadn’t known Bella. He barely even knew Rita, when it came right down to it. And yet the sight of the headstone was moving in a way he wouldn’t have anticipated. He kept his hand on Quentin’s arm, squeezing softly, and Quentin shifted minutely to bring them into further contact.

“Tell us about her,” Quentin said, eyes tracing over Bella’s name.

“Oh,” Rita said, a wistful smile lighting up her face and erasing decades from it. “Oh, she was dreadfully bossy, and overprotective. She had a horrid temper.”

Eliot glanced down at Quentin and raised an eyebrow, but Rita wasn’t done. “She loved me terribly. She would have done anything for me. She gave me everything. It’s not easy, to lose someone like that from your life, no matter how long you have with them before the end.”

“She saved our lives, more than once,” Quentin said, giving Rita a smile. “I’ll always be grateful to her for that.”

“I should be thanking the two of you,” Rita said, her lips pursed and eyes somewhat troubled. “You saved Arielle. You rescued her from a terrible fate. For so many years I worried for her. I worried for her before she was even born, and now that the trouble has passed, I find myself…” she trailed off, looking down at the patch of unmarked dirt just to the right of Bella’s grave.

“You rescued her too,” Eliot said, awkward but hopefully kind. “We never would have known where to start if it weren’t for you.”

“I fear, boys, that I wasted much of my life being angry about what had happened to me, and being worried about when it would happen again.” She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, still not looking at them, still resting her eyes on the place where one day she would be buried. “I loved my wife, but the shadow of my experience changed our lives, changed our love for one another. Things never went back to the way they were before.”

Eliot had thought about this very thing a lot on their journey home. How badly he longed for the life he’d left when they’d first started out on this quest, and how much it hurt to know he’d never get it back.

“But Bella was changed too,” Quentin said. “By her quest. She had to have been, if it was anything like what Eliot and I went through.” He squared his shoulders and tilted his head towards Rita until she finally looked up at him. “Different doesn’t mean _ ruined, _though. Of course you were changed forever, and of course she was, and of course your relationship altered. Does that mean it wasn’t worth it?”

If Eliot had had a ring in his pocket, he would have sunk to his knees right there in a graveyard in front of Aunt Rita and the souls of the dead. Quentin was just so brave and good and _ of course _ he’d already found a way to frame things in the most positive light possible. Unlike Eliot, who had been too busy trying to force himself to be okay, to let the end of the quest erase everything about it that had hurt him. Quentin had enough practice with pain to know denial wasn’t actually the right tactic, and Eliot liked to think he’d learned that lesson as well, even if he needed the occasional reminder. That was why he had Quentin. Thank _ God _ he had Quentin.

Rita smiled at Quentin like she was proud of him, too, and echoed Eliot’s affectionate thoughts. “My dear young man, you have wisdom far beyond your years. Eliot and Arielle are both very lucky to have you.”

Quentin predictably demurred at this compliment, but Eliot stepped fully into his space and wrapped an arm around his waist, dipping to press a kiss to the crown of his head. “The luckiest.”

“And you’re right, Quentin,” Rita continued, stepping forward to brush her fingers across the top of the headstone. “I had a good life with Bella. I shouldn’t let the darker memories overshadow the rest of it. I am grateful to you for the reminder. And, as I’ve said, for my niece’s life.”

“You’re welcome,” Eliot said. It was inane, it was pointless, it was not enough. But he had to say something, had to try and explain to this woman how much he felt for her, for her family. For everything she’d gone through and everything she’d survived.

“I don’t have much time left,” Rita said, a gentle smile on her face. “But now I can spend the remainder of that time in real peace.” She stepped away from Bella’s grave and towards Quentin and Eliot, resting a hand against each of their arms. “Walk an old woman home, will you? It’s getting late.”


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two - In Which Life Goes On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am extremely emotional! This is the last chapter of the narrative proper. Next week, the epilogue, and then we'll be saying goodbye to this story!
> 
> (But don't worry, I've got more coming after this one wraps up!)

**QUENTIN**

It took actual, literal, _ months _ for things to feel like they were settled again. In fact, it took longer to get over the quest, more or less, than it had taken to complete it. But eventually, Quentin found himself working on the mosaic, the midmorning sun shining in the clearing and lighting up the details of his every-day world like today was just - a _ day_, and he realized that he hadn’t thought once all morning about how Arielle was doing, or felt anxious about being away from Teddy. Eliot was inside, Ari and Taseer had taken Teddy into town, and today was a day like any other day.

“You look happy,” Eliot said, coming out from the cottage and plopping down next to Quentin, passing over a mug of water. “What are you thinking about?”

“I was thinking about how I spent all morning not thinking about anything. It’s fucking nice.”

Eliot laughed, and it was a free sound, uncomplicated and true. “Isn’t it? Yesterday I was helping Teddy with his schoolwork and I realized suddenly that I wasn’t freaked out that you weren’t within my line of sight. I knew you were down by the river, and I - I believed you were okay. That hasn’t happened since we got home.”

“This morning, Taseer and Ari came out of their room and they both looked tired,” Quentin said. “But _ good _ tired, the kind of tired you get from - well, you know.”

“And to think, with our son right next door…” Eliot _ tsked _ and Quentin rolled his eyes at him.

“Glass houses,” he said, and Eliot scooted closer to kiss Quentin, warm and soft in the heat of the day.

“I think they’re going to move out,” Eliot said as he pulled away, keeping his face close to Quentin’s. “This place is _ so _not big enough for five people, and they need their own space.”

“I think it’s probably time,” Quentin agreed. “But I’m not going to ask them. They can stay as long as they need.”

“Of course,” Eliot said, smiling at him again and then setting to work sorting tiles. Recovery wasn’t always a linear thing, and there were certainly times when Arielle or Taseer seemed to relapse, curling into themselves and flashing back to the time they had spent outside of their own control, fighting to process months of backlogged emotions and thoughts. But by and large, they seemed to be in a good place, and able to lean on each other and the rest of their support system in the moments when things were more difficult.

Turned out, Eliot was right about Arielle and Taseer being ready for a change. It was only a couple of weeks later that Arielle approached Quentin and Eliot with her Serious Face on, and announced that she and Taseer were going to be searching for a place of their own nearby. Ari’s family had offered them a building on their lands, but they’d politely declined. If space was what they needed, it would hardly work to live in a house literally owned by Arielle’s parents.

“I even got a letter from my uncle,” Taseer said, to Quentin’s unease and astonishment. “Well, from one of his secretaries. My estate is still mine, apparently.”

“We’ve decided to give the Pickwicks some… um… space,” Arielle put in, a wry twist to her mouth. “But maybe we’ll move back there one day.” She gave Taseer a soft smile, one that spoke of longer conversations, and contemplation of the future.

Quentin couldn’t really conceive of a universe where he’d ever want to move back to an estate that tied him directly to his former abusers. But then again, he knew Taseer’s family meant something to him. Not his uncle - but his parents, and the place they’d left him to live, and to run. It could be one of Teddy’s homes someday, too - another place in the world where he could feel safe and at peace. It was Taseer and Arielle’s call, and he trusted them. He’d signed his name to it, after all.

“Thank you,” Taseer said. “I know it goes without saying most of the time, but your generosity, in letting me stay here…”

“In letting you steal Quentin’s wife,” Eliot put in with a smile.

“I’ve been greedy,” Taseer agreed easily. “But I mean it. Thank you.”

“We’ve loved having you,” Quentin said, and he meant it, too. There had been so many endings already - his marriage with Arielle, and the safety and familiarity of their family of four, had been disrupted the moment Taseer had come into their lives. It would be easy to resent him for everything that had happened since. Easy, and also impossible, once he paused to examine the way Taseer looked at Arielle. He could never resent happiness like that. It was all he wanted for Ari. And the four of them were a co-parenting unit, now. They all wanted what was best for each other, and best for Teddy as well.

Of course, Taseer and Arielle moving out meant yet another period of transition. It meant dealing with a disappointed and confused Teddy, who seemed more upset with the new routine than he had the last time around. Of course, the last time Teddy had been forced to get used to traveling between his parents, it had ended in months of separation from all of them. It was bound to be difficult. Divorce was divorce, after all, no matter how amicable. Quentin had personal experience with what that could do to a person.

And as Quentin, Eliot, Arielle, and Taseer worked out new patterns and routines, they had to deal not only with the natural growing pains of raising their kid, like they had previously, but with the aftereffects of trauma. It wasn’t just Arielle and Taseer who had been scarred by their experiences; Quentin and Eliot had their dark moments, too, separately and together.

Trauma wasn’t a superficial wound. Even when the worst of the pain and fear had scabbed over, there were still pockets left over, uncertainties that arose if Arielle was ever late to pick up her son, or if Teddy ever pitched a fit when Quentin and Eliot came to take him home from Taseer and Arielle’s new place.

Inevitably, Quentin spent a couple of days in bed, lost deep in his own mind, just weeks after Arielle and Taseer had collected the last of their belongings and officially moved in to their new abode. Quentin had known it would happen. There was so much that was catching up with him, the release of relief and joy not enough to counteract the realities of his brain’s chemical makeup. Eliot was far from being over his own dark experiences, of course, which resulted in him joining Quentin in bed, ignoring the stubborn set to his shoulders and just resting next to him, needing the closeness even if it meant putting up with Quentin’s surliest moods.

But eventually life, as it always seemed to, really did move on.

Teddy still called the cottage home. It was where most of his clothing lived, his toys and his school work and his favorite things. And when he went away to spend a week or a few days with his mother and Taseer, Quentin allowed himself to be grateful for the time alone with Eliot. They were making the whole thing work, and as everyone continued to heal, their blended family actually did start to feel happy again, the way it once had before curses and quests-within-quests had disrupted the equilibrium.

In fact, the most lingering effect in Eliot and Quentin’s own relationship was a tendency to be grateful for every second they’d been granted. Some might call it “clingy.” Hell, _ Eliot _called it clingy. Which was maybe fair, but the way Quentin saw it, they were allowed a certain measure of reassurance, after what they’d endured.

In practical terms, it really just meant that over the past few months, they’d been having a lot of sex. Whenever their other co-parents had Teddy, it was like they’d transported themselves back in time to their earliest days together, touch-starved and eager for sensation, disbelieving and happy with the freshness of connection. It was, Quentin mused, like some sort of honeymoon phase relapse, or something. And even knowing that in some ways the whole thing was likely a reaction to recent events, and therefore perhaps in need of further examination... Quentin was emphatically not complaining about the results.

Especially on long summer days where, after kissing Teddy goodbye and seeing Ari and Taseer off on a weekend trip with their son, they relished their alone-time by erecting the flimsiest of privacy screens around the daybed outside and then stripping naked, letting the sun warm their skin slowly over the hours. On one such day, mosaic thoroughly abandoned, they spent the afternoon working themselves up for long minutes with nothing more than kisses and filthy talk, until Eliot’s graphic descriptions about wanting to fuck Quentin’s mouth had seemed good enough to test out for real.

Quentin nipped his way down the length of Eliot’s body, practically salivating, thrilling at the brush of the blanket against his naked flesh, the way the brightness and openness of the clearing emphasized the tenuous nature of their privacy. He wasn’t actively _ hoping _ for someone to come across them in flagrante, as it were, but there really was an added sexual thrill to doing this outside, a safe outlet for an exhibitionism kink that Quentin never would have imagined himself to have. Quentin slipped himself comfortably between the curve of Eliot’s legs and pressed a few kisses to his partner’s hipbone, before sliding his mouth up the length of Eliot’s cock, root to tip.

Descriptions of mouth-fucking notwithstanding, the reality of Quentin’s blowjob ended up being a lot more languid and drawn out than Eliot had been suggesting earlier. When Quentin had finally actually gotten his mouth around Eliot’s half-hard cock, Eliot had gone boneless, moaning and sinking into the bed with breathless astonishment. He let Quentin lick and suck him to full hardness in a thorough, exploratory sort of way that was making Quentin’s own cock heavy and aching between his legs. God, he fucking loved feeling Eliot between his lips like this, against his tongue. The taste of him, the velvet hardness, and most of all the _ trust _ of it, Eliot floating away and letting Quentin bring him off at his own pace.

Quentin was content to keep it slow and gentle and nearly lazy, his mouth working sloppy and wet against Eliot, relishing in the way his breath hitched and the low, wordless groans rumbling up from his chest. He’d been going at it just long enough that his jaw was starting to ache, just long enough to consider speeding things along so he could crawl into Eliot’s lap and get pressure against his cock where he was starting to really, really need it, when Eliot spoke, nearly conversational.

"Do you want to get married?"

Quentin raised his head, coming alarmingly close to choking on Eliot's cock in his surprise. "Um - what?"

"Oh, sorry, don't stop what you were doing," Eliot said, waving a hand downward in a _ do go on _ sort of gesture. Quentin laughed, disbelieving.

"Was that a proposal?"

"No, it was a question."

"But the _ question _was - "

Eliot sighed, like Quentin was being unreasonable, and put a hand on the top of his head, trying to push him back down. "It was more of an idyll curiosity."

Quentin frowned at him in suspicion, before ducking down and licking slowly at the head of Eliot's cock, tasting the saltiness of his precum. "Oh, shit, Q," Eliot said, his stomach muscles tensing under Quentin's hand. He licked a few more times, and then lifted back up, leveling his partner with a glare.

"An idyll curiosity?"

Eliot groaned, his head tipping back. "Fuck, Quentin, don't tease me."

"Are you saying we can't have this conversation until I get you off?" Quentin asked. He was still feeling the shocks of astounded confusion rippling through his body, but he couldn't help feeling amused at Eliot's antics. Eliot was incredibly hard, his cock standing straight up against his stomach, throbbing with need, and he seemed truly frustrated that his words had caused an interruption in proceedings. It was as if he'd thought Quentin would just nod his head with his mouth full and keep going.

"Um. If you want me to be able to focus, then yes," Eliot said, pushing with no subtlety again on Quentin's head.

Quentin sighed, as if being asked to do a great hardship, and slid his mouth back down Eliot, pulling out all of his best material. As much as he got off on sucking cock, he was suddenly a little impatient for the afterglow part.

Of course, Quentin being the master that he was, it didn't take long for Eliot to go rigid, stuttering out curses and white-knuckling his hands in Quentin's hair (_oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, it's so good, you're so good, baby, etc. etc._) as he spilled down his throat.

Quentin popped off of his spent cock and climbed his way up Eliot's body, sitting astride his hips and staring down at his flushed face and glazed eyes. "Okay, talk."

"Mmm, you're incredible, Q," Eliot said, his voice low with sated lust.

"Thanks," Quentin said, grinding his own hardness down into where Eliot was now most sensitive, delighting in the nearly pained sound he made. "Much appreciated. Now talk."

Eliot reached a hand out to stroke Quentin's erection, but he slapped it away.

"Why did you ask me that, Eliot?"

Eliot shrugged up at him, smiling peacefully, reaching again for Quentin's cock. Quentin let him take it this time, closing his eyes against the feel of the slow, dry strokes of Eliot's fist. "I thought it might be nice. You know, they do lots of marriage ceremonies at the solstice festivals every year. We could bring Ari and Taseer and the kiddo, make an evening of it. Or we could hire someone, do it here, or at the farm - "

"You're serious?" Quentin said, suddenly much less in the mood for teasing. There was a lump in his throat. "So. So - that was a proposal, then."

Eliot shook his head, frowning. "Nuh-uh. I'm going to get down on bended knee for you, darling. I was scoping out your level of interest. It's just a formality, really. You know I'm all yours."

Quentin shuddered out a breath as Eliot tightened his hand, going from almost lazy, light strokes to a more determined rhythm. "Oh, God."

"So - interested?"

"Jesus, El."

Eliot levered himself up on one arm while keeping his other hand busy. Quentin thought about conjuring lube, but then Eliot swiped a thumb over the head of Quentin's cock and used the moisture there to slick him up, not quite enough for a smooth ride, but enough to make his stomach quiver and his legs start to shake. "You haven't answered me," he said, grinning wickedly at Quentin as he stroked him.

"Well, you haven't proposed, apparently," Quentin said, breathless.

"You're not going to give me a sneak preview of your answer?" Eliot asked, sliding his hand lower to roll each of Quentin's balls between his fingers for a moment before resuming the rhythm.

"You'll just have to - fuck, oh, _ El_, please - keep doing that - You'll just have to t-take your chances," he managed finally, quivering and on the edge. He levered his hips upward, fucking himself hard into Eliot's fist, chasing release.

"Come for me," Eliot said, eloquent and calm, the touch of command in his voice making Quentin's blood catch on fire. "Come on, Q, come all over me."

And he did, pitching forward and kissing Eliot as he came, sucking on his tongue and whimpering into his mouth. Eliot kissed him back, continuing to stroke him through the last of it, until he was shivering and twitching against the continued contact.

"God, I love you. You're fucking gorgeous," Eliot told him, like it was a simple fact and not an extremely biased opinion. Quentin just hummed, too blissed out for even a basic statement of reciprocation, and snuggled his nose into Eliot's neck. He wondered if his partner was aware he was on a ticking clock, now - if Quentin had anything to say about it, he was beating Eliot to the punch.

* * *

In the coming weeks, Quentin was exceedingly nervous that Eliot would get there first. Not that he didn’t want Eliot to propose, but honestly… Arielle had proposed to both of them, years ago, and Quentin found himself quite wanting to be the one to get down on one knee this time around.

Eliot was more the grand romantic gestures type, but he was also the one who had stood aside and let Quentin get married to someone else, for the sake of their family. And Quentin knew Eliot had been happy with their life, just as much as he had. There could be no regrets when it came to Arielle and Teddy, the life they had all built together. But still. Quentin had a pretty good idea of what getting married meant to Eliot. He’d admitted to Quentin many times that happiness and peace were things he’d never expected to have in his lifetime. Quentin wanted to give him that - cheesy gestures and public declarations and all.

He prepared himself for it, commissioning a ring in town while he was there spending the day with Teddy, and after that it was only a matter of finding the proper moment. Some time when Eliot wouldn’t see it coming. Some time when the mood struck. And, preferably, some time when their son wasn’t around. He felt pretty confident about Eliot’s inevitable reaction, after all.

It was less than a month after Eliot had first raised the idea of getting engaged, and they had plans to meet up with Ari, Taseer, and Teddy in Langdale, so they could bring Teddy back home with them for the week after a weekend with the others. Eliot had oh-so-casually suggested that they go into town the night before collecting their son and get a nice dinner, maybe get a room in the one nice inn the tiny town could boast. Eliot was good - smooth and natural, acting for all the world like he really was just suggesting a small weekend getaway. If Quentin hadn’t had proposing on the brain, he probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But as it was…

He had to strike first.

And so he waited until they were about to head out the door and hit the road, hoping that Eliot’s own nerves would distract him from Quentin’s obviously squirrely behavior. His bag was packed for an overnight trip he was almost certain he wouldn’t really be taking. He didn’t think Eliot was going to let him leave the bed for the rest of the day after what was about to happen.

Wishful thinking, maybe, but also, he trusted this man. And he knew him. Very well.

Eliot was distracted with last-minute arrangements, digging through his haversack to make sure he’d packed what he needed, when Quentin decided that it was now or never.

"Hey, El?" he asked. His voice was shaking just slightly, but he hoped he'd be able to play it off. He stood, the ring clutched in his fist, and waited for his partner to turn around.

"Have you seen my other shirt? The one with - " Eliot began, distracted, as he turned and came a few steps towards him. Then he stopped, his eyes narrowed as he looked at Quentin. "What?"

Quentin took a step forward so they were standing right in front of each other and then, with a deep breath, dropped to one knee.

"Eliot - "

"Quentin - " Eliot interrupted, jumping backwards. "Wait - " His eyes had gone round and wide.

"Eliot," Quentin repeated, stubborn, and then tried not to burst into laughter when Eliot held up a finger to shut him up. He put his other hand out behind him and twisted his fingers through the air. A small box shot out from his open bag on the bed, and zoomed into Eliot's hand. He flipped it open, shooting a mock glare at Quentin, still on a knee in front of him.

"You dick," Eliot said, dropping to his knees in front of Quentin. "You knew I - "

"I win, fair and square," Quentin said, giggling. "I'm on my knees first - "

"Aren't you always?"

"Eliot, honey, I practiced a speech."

Eliot's jaw clamped shut. His eyes were darting all over Quentin's face, and as Quentin watched, he saw a sheen of tears appear in them. "Okay," he said finally, hoarsely, and he carefully placed the small box into his pocket, out of sight. "Okay."

Quentin took a deep breath, and lowered himself so they were mirroring each other's postures, both sitting on their knees facing each other. He held out the ring for Eliot to see. It was a simple band, with knotted patterns worked in and around it like a snake eating its own tail, glints of silver against the gold.

"I had this commissioned in town a few weeks back, and I've been working on the finishing touches myself whenever I've had a free moment. At first I thought about getting you something flashy, you know, but in the end I settled for this.” Quentin fumbled the ring between his fingers for a moment, fiddling with it just so he had something to do. But he made himself maintain eye contact with Eliot as he continued.

“The design is knot-work, a spell, actually, that's designed to protect you. Your body, your mind, your soul. It's pretty much the exact opposite of a standard binding spell, actually. Maybe that would have been the obvious - the romantic - thing to do, but I believe it to be unnecessary when it comes to you and me. Instead, this enchantment guards you against soul magic, heart magic, anything artificial."

He paused for a moment, watched mesmerized as Eliot's jaw started to quiver with suppressed emotion. Quentin had slipped into some sort of headspace that removed all trace of nerves. He found himself giving the speech that he’d practiced, without stuttering or awkwardness. For once in his life, his singular purpose, his steadfast devotion, was guiding his way, smooth and serene. He smiled, proud of himself and desperately, endlessly in love.

"When we were at Whitespire, I heard what you said about… about destiny, and about choosing what you actually want, and not what the universe has decided for you. I wanted to give you this ring because I want your choices to always belong to you, one hundred percent. I don't want you to marry me because it's in your blood or it's your destiny or it's what's best for anyone other than us. I want you to marry me because you want to." He took another deep breath and watched as Eliot's eyelids fluttered, finally dislodging a single tear. "And I want to give this to you because I trust that your choice will always be me. I can't tell you what a gift it is, to propose to you today knowing what your answer will be. That kind of security is something I've fought for my whole life. And with you, after everything that's happened, I have it. You gave me my family, my son, a life I love and honor every day. And I want to choose to keep doing that with you. And I want you to choose to keep doing that with me, for as long as we both have. On this world or any other. So. Eliot Waugh, will you marry me?"

Eliot was just staring at him, trembling and actively crying at this point, and it took him a long moment to work up to an actual response. "Yes," he whispered. "Yes, I'll marry you."

And Quentin, who had been incredibly proud of himself for his poise, for his own lack of tears, felt the tension crack inside of him, his own tears springing from him like they'd been waiting for a word from Eliot. "Okay. That's good, then."

Eliot laughed, a watery, disbelieving sound. "I think you're supposed to - "

"Right," Quentin said, and he held the ring out towards Eliot, who presented him with his hand. Eliot had once been in the habit of wearing multiple rings, but he'd wound up with just a single opal one as regular decor for many years. His ring finger on his left hand was unadorned, and Quentin slid the ring onto it, performing a quick tut to adjust it exactly to Eliot's size. He raised Eliot's hand up and pressed a kiss against his skin, just above the newly adorned ring. Eliot let out a hiccuping little sob at the gesture.

"I'm so happy," Eliot said, his voice hoarse. "Not even just because of - this is incredible, Q, you're incredible, but you know you - you make me this happy every single day. I wake up with you and I'm just - I can't believe I get to have this. It's better than a dream."

Quentin was having a hard time understanding why they weren't already kissing, and leaned forward to rectify this oversight, connecting their lips in a slow, trembling caress that left shivers running up and down his spine, even after all of these years. Eliot kissed him back, deepening it into something searing and aching with promise, but then pulled back, leaning their foreheads together. His eyes were pressed tight together. "Wait, I had a speech too," he said. "You made me fucking forget it."

"I'm not sorry," Quentin said immediately, and Eliot laughed, still choked with tears. Keeping their foreheads together, he reached down to pull out the small wooden box in his pocket.

"Okay, so - I made this," he said, holding out a plain gold band. "It's got magic in it too, actually. I got Teddy's help."

"You - what?" Quentin said, startled. Eliot shushed him.

"It's the cheesiest goddamn thing I've ever done, Q, so I hope you appreciate this... um..." he actually looked a little nervous, the tips of his cheekbones coloring just slightly, and Quentin was proud of himself for his restraint. He was pretty sure he'd never wanted to be kissing him so badly. "It's love magic. I adapted it from - well, sex magic, if we're being honest, but this version is totally G-rated, I swear. I mean, obviously, or I wouldn't have asked our kid to help with it, and - "

"Eliot," Quentin said, wonder filling his heart. "Honey, you're babbling."

"I really didn't think I'd be nervous about this," Eliot said, a huff of amusement in his voice. "You just - God, Q. Fuck."

Quentin laughed, because that was better than bursting into tears. "Okay, so - love magic?"

"Yeah, yes, it's - so when you're wearing it, all you have to do is tap it and you'll feel - here, let me show you." Eliot lifted Quentin's hand and slid the ring onto it, and Quentin lost his internal battle and let a few tears drop down his face. Eliot lifted the hand and kissed it, then pressed the metal of the ring hard into Quentin's hand.

He felt - something. It wasn't easy to describe, but the intensity of it was strong enough that he actually jerked his hand away from Eliot's, staring down at the ring in wonder. It was like his love for Eliot had become a tangible physical sensation, something echoing and coursing along his skin. But it wasn't that exactly either, something - sharper, familiar but not too familiar, the flavor of the emotion wasn't his own -

"Eliot."

"So the way it works is that you were thinking about me, so you're feeling - "

"This is _ you_, oh my God - " Quentin wasn't aware of moving, but suddenly his arms were around Eliot, his face mashed up against his neck, breathing in his scent and willing his limbs to stop trembling. He still felt it, a buzzing sensation running through every part of him. There weren't words for it. Devotion, lust, admiration, true and simple and steadfast _ fondness_, a love deep enough that there could be no end to it.

Eliot was holding him tight, and Quentin could feel their heartbeats lining up, a reassurance as the shivers of Eliot's emotions faded from Quentin's skin. "Too much?" Eliot asked him, his voice tight with nerves. "It's supposed to be - "

"God, you're - you really fucking love me," Quentin said, astonished, and he nuzzled his nose deep into Eliot's neck to feel the vibrations of Eliot's answering laugh.

"Please tell me this isn't coming as a surprise," Eliot teased, pulling gently back. He extricated Quentin's arms from around him and brought his left hand back up, tapping against the ring again. "Think about our son."

This time, Quentin was somewhat more ready for it, but the sensation of feeling Teddy's emotions was no less overwhelming for all that. His son admired him. His son thought that he was brave and good and kind and trustworthy. His son knew he could depend upon him, had the trust of a well cared for and nurtured child, the belief that he'd always have his father to turn to.

"Okay you win," Quentin said finally, as the emotions fizzled out. "This is fucking incredible, El. How did you do this?"

"Well, it's like I said, I started with sex magic and I worked it back to its fundamentals. If you look at popper - "

"Never mind, you giant nerd, I don't care right now, just kiss me - "

"_You’re _ calling _ me _ a - " Eliot started, but Quentin couldn’t wait.

And Eliot let the quip go, for once, under the onslaught of Quentin’s affections. Quentin thought briefly about using magic to strip them both out of their clothes, but doing that would mean actually performing magic using tuts, and _ that _ would mean untangling his hands from where he already had them gripped, tight and possessive, in Eliot’s hair. He pushed forward until Eliot fell back and let his legs spread wide, and then Quentin climbed on top of him, where he fit as natural as ever. Whatever uncertainty or nerves Eliot had had during his speech, vanished once he had Quentin in his lap. Quentin could feel it when Eliot regained mastery over himself, his hands sliding sure and smooth up under Quentin’s shirt, skin pressed to skin. Quentin shivered, already anticipating, and Eliot pulled back from the kiss, grinning broadly. “You are trouble, Coldwater,” he said, low and sultry. “God, I had _ plans _ for you tonight, you’ve totally derailed them.”

“Not all of them, I’d imagine,” Quentin said, breathless. “Show me.” The tenderness he’d been feeling for Eliot had transformed into unadulterated lust. He felt the metal of the ring on his finger growing warm, and felt the shock of Eliot’s newly adorned ring as well, sliding against his spine.

“Go get on the bed,” Eliot said, the words catching in the infinitesimal space between their mouths. Quentin let out a little moan, allowing the sound to escape him for what he knew it would do to Eliot. He rolled his hips forward so Eliot could feel him through their pants. They were on the floor, the bed was only five feet away, and they weren’t exactly kids anymore… and yet somehow the thought of moving, of separating himself from Eliot for even one moment, was too much to contemplate.

“I want you so fucking bad right now,” Quentin said, breath hitching as Eliot’s hands moved further south, cupping his ass and pulling their groins tight together. Quentin’s head rolled forward, helpless and automatic, into the hollow of Eliot’s throat.

“God, Q. I love you so much. You drive me crazy, do you know that?” Eliot jerked up against him so Quentin could feel him already fully hard even through the layers of clothing, and then let go, pushing him away. “Now go,” he said, hoarse, “get on the bed.”

Quentin practically tripped over himself to obey, feeling suddenly like an awkward young twenty-something again, working up the courage to kiss his best friend in the world, hoping against hope for reciprocation. Eliot was hot on his heels, pinning him onto his back before he could even make a token effort to pull off a single piece of clothing. Quentin let Eliot more or less manhandle him to the center of the bed, and then he raised his head up, wanting, and Eliot reconnected their lips, kissing him deep and desperate and endless.

“We’re getting married,” Eliot whispered against him when he finally pulled back. He rested their temples together, his breath fanning out over Quentin’s overheated skin. “We’re getting _ married_, Q.”

The words were gentle and loving and full of wonder, yet somehow they were translating in Quentin’s mind to more lust, more desperation, more wanting. It didn’t help that while Eliot was talking, and peppering slow kisses across his nose and cheekbones, he was still grinding their hips together, hard and slow.

“I know you’re trying to be all sweet and tender but I’m about thirty seconds from coming in my pants like a teenager,” Quentin said.

“Is that so?” Eliot said, sliding his hands down so he could grip Quentin’s hips. “Well, what if I want you to?”

“I suppose it’s your choice,” Quentin bit out, closing his teeth over his bottom lip and letting his eyes roll back into his head. “You can make me come_ now_, or you can fucking stop that and get inside me first.”

Eliot froze, his eyes sliding closed and his nose pressing hard into the side of Quentin’s cheek. “Fuck. Okay. Yes, your idea works.”

Quentin knew how to push Eliot’s buttons pretty well by this point, and if there was one thing that got him worked up more than anything else, it was Quentin coming while Eliot was fucking him. In missionary.

Which was just so - _ sweet_, given what Quentin knew of Eliot’s early sexual history, that he almost wanted to tease Eliot for it. But… stones and glass houses, and all that. They were, it transpired, ridiculously compatible in this, as in so much.

Eliot didn’t seem to want to stop kissing Quentin long enough to get them undressed, so they managed it slowly, sloppily, reminding Quentin again of the earlier days of their relationship, when they’d been so hot for each other that pulling away even for a second had seemed unthinkable. So much had changed since then. So much hadn’t. By the time they were both naked, Quentin was panting hard, his cock leaking against both of their skins where is was crushed between them, sliding along Eliot’s own.

“God, El,” he said, breath hitching as Eliot bit his bottom lip.

“This is mine,” Eliot said, tracing the line of Quentin’s lip with his tongue, before nipping at it again. “And this - ” he dipped his head lower, mouth suckling against Quentin’s pulse point. “This spot, right here, where I can touch you and you make that sound - _ yes _ \- that sound, right there,” Eliot continued, breathy and joyful, as Quentin whimpered. “That’s mine. All of you. You’re - ”

“You’re mine too,” Quentin said, testing the words out, tasting them and letting their meaning sink into him, even as he writhed under Eliot, throwing his head back to bare his throat, his words coming out croaking and low with lust. He brought his hands down, sliding them over the skin of Eliot’s back, marveling at the way the muscles rippled under his touch. He grabbed Eliot’s ass in both of his hands and squeezed, thrusting up to feel his cock slide, already slippery, in the space between their bodies. Eliot let out a choked sound and bit down on Quentin’s neck hard enough to hurt. “This is mine,” Quentin said. “Forever.”

“Your hands,” Eliot said, aimless and aching, the words catching as he moved his lips lower to nip and lick along Quentin’s collarbone. “Your wrists, your shoulders, your hair, your _ eyes_, Q, you have the prettiest eyes…”

Something had shifted. Quentin couldn’t exactly have described the mood as _ frantic _ \- it was too exploratory, too slow, for that, both of them tracing their hands over each other’s bodies, pressing fingertips into flesh, lips and tongues ghosting like floating wonder over every inch. But it wasn’t gentle, either - there was a definite edge to the way Eliot was moving against him, his cock so hard it was twitching against Quentin’s stomach, leaking, and Quentin felt the pressure of it too, a pounding in his temples, a clutching in his gut. It was unreal, how much he loved. How much he was loved.

It would have been terrifying, except that he knew he wasn’t alone.

Eliot slid his head back up to kiss him again, open mouthed and groaning into it, this shift of his hips more purposeful now as he licked into Quentin, his hands sliding down their bodies, slipping under so he could cup Quentin’s ass, grind him up so their hips were flush. Quentin’s whole body was shaking, his palms tingling as he pushed and pulled at the skin of Eliot’s back. Wondering, he pressed his ring hard into the base of his finger, and then shouted as he felt Eliot’s emotions within him again, the cascade of _ love love love _ pounding through him like a second heartbeat.

“_Fuck_,” he cried out as the sensation started to dissipate, the whispers of it curling up and out and away from his fevered skin. He ground his cock hard into Eliot’s stomach, mindless and chasing the pressure. “_God_.”

“It’s the closest I could come,” Eliot said, panting into Quentin’s chest as he kissed down his body, sliding his cock down and away from the cradle of Quentin’s hips. Quentin whimpered at the loss even as Eliot brought a hand up and tapped it against the ring in acknowledgment of what Quentin had just done. “The closest I could come to making you understand, Q. I need you to know, I _ need _ you to know - ”

“I do,” Quentin said, out of his mind, as Eliot’s mouth ducked lower, his lips open and wet against stomach, hipbone, thigh. “I know.”

Eliot groaned, the vibration moving from the tender skin at the top of Quentin’s thigh up and through his cock, like a tangible thing, a physical, feather-light touch. Quentin jerked convulsively, cursing the lack of pressure against him where he needed it most. “Eliot.” There was nothing else to say but that. _"Eliot _.”

“I know. I’ve got you, I know,” Eliot said, grabbing Quentin’s hips to slide him further up the bed, so he’d have room to lay fully between Quentin’s legs. He looked up at him then, made eye contact with him and shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Let me show you,” he said, his voice cracking and anxious, like he thought Quentin might say no, might deny him his heart’s greatest desire. Quentin nodded, his head light and bloodless. And before he could think of anything to say, Eliot’s mouth was suddenly everywhere, rolling Quentin’s balls against his tongue, swallowing around the head of his cock, tongue curling and jabbing and licking at the wetness. All Quentin could do was get his hands in Eliot’s hair and hold on for the ride.

Eliot was like a man possessed, moaning and desperate, like Quentin was the best thing he’d ever tasted, the only thing he needed to survive. Quentin normally would have said he got off more on giving head than receiving it, not that he’d ever been one to turn down Eliot’s mouth when it was on offer, but this was - this was _ more _ than Eliot’s usual methodical efforts. This was a sloppy and frantic assault that was bringing Quentin to the edge much faster than he would have liked. He didn’t have the words to stop him, but Eliot knew when he was close, swallowing him down deep and then pulling off, a hand coming up to press the base of Quentin’s cock hard into his stomach, arresting his orgasm just before it could crest over him. Quentin jerked and shuddered, his head thrown back against the pillow. “Fuck. _ Fuck_.”

“Do it again,” Eliot said, and he sounded hoarse, wrecked, his eyes entirely black and his mouth red and wet, when Quentin managed to lever himself weakly up on one elbow to look down at him.

“What?”

“The ring. Do it again, and keep doing it, Q. I want you to feel me everywhere.”

Eliot didn’t give Quentin a chance to respond. He kept one hand where it was, pinning Quentin’s throbbing cock to his stomach, and used the other to hitch Quentin’s thighs up so he could duck his mouth lower, pressing his tongue against Quentin’s hole.

Quentin shouted again, wordless, and then did as he’d been asked, twisting his hands in front of him and pressing the metal of the ring into his skin. He did it again and again while Eliot licked him open, thorough and _ motivated_, readying him for Eliot’s cock, until Quentin was crying openly, drunk on the knowledge that the best person he’d ever known in his whole life loved him _ this much_, wanted him _ this much_. It would never cease to be astonishing. It would never stop taking Quentin’s breath away.

“El, please,” Quentin said, not sure what he was asking for, only that Eliot was the only one who could give it to him. “Oh fuck, _ please_.”

Eliot looked up at him then, his eyes aching and expression debauched, but his voice was firm as he answered. “No. Not yet, not until I’m in you.”

Quentin whimpered, letting the sound fall from his lips, past the point of shame. Eliot’s eyes shuttered shut at the sound, almost like he was in pain, and he squeezed his hand around the base of Quentin’s cock, where he was still keeping the pressure firm, constricting. “Fucking hell, Quentin,” Eliot said, suddenly hoarse. “I’m gonna make you scream.”

They hadn’t used a spell this time, to stop Quentin from coming, but he trusted Eliot to guide him to the edge and then back from it, knew that it would be worth it when he was finally allowed to let go. Eliot kept him there, teetering, for a long time, using his tongue, his fingers, his tongue again, pausing occasionally to remind Quentin to use the ring, so he could feel a contrasting sensation of deep love and affection alongside the purely physical worship of Eliot’s mouth against him. Quentin did, pressing and twisting the warm metal again and again, even as he felt his arms grow heavy, his fingers tingle, his body uncoordinated and dense and aching. He could do nothing but let Eliot touch him. And touch him. And touch him. And only when Eliot was good and ready did he crawl back up Quentin’s body, sinking onto him and into him until every inch of Quentin was covered, touched, possessed.

When Eliot was inside of him, he finally released his firm grip around the base of Quentin’s cock, wrapping his arms instead around Quentin’s back and head, crushing their lips together hard enough that noses crunched into cheekbones, teeth clacked against teeth. It didn’t matter - Quentin was past words, past wanting, floating only on Eliot, Eliot, Eliot, on what the man he was going to marry was giving to him. Taking from him. All of it.

“Quentin,” Eliot said, keeping the stroke of his cock steady and slow inside of him. “Q, I’m so fucking gone on you there aren’t words for it.” His breath was hot and gasping against Quentin’s cheek, his lips brushing whisper-soft against his skin, in contrast to the hard and hot length of him deep inside.

“I know,” Quentin managed to say, pulling the words directly from his chest. “I know, you’re showing me.”

Eliot shuddered, his thrusts growing faster, hands convulsing and tugging in Quentin’s hair. “You’ve given me everything. You’re giving me_ everything_, baby.”

“It’s yours. It’s always been yours.”

Quentin moved his hips in time with Eliot’s escalating thrusts, his cock sliding and rutting where it was crushed between their stomachs. He couldn’t breathe except in breathy, pitchy gasps, couldn’t move except in uncoordinated shudders, some imperative instinct to climb Eliot, to be within him even as he pulled him deeper inside.

Eliot was caging him into the bed, head burrowed in his neck, lips and tongue and teeth working at the skin against his pulse, cock buried deep inside of him - surrounding him, possessing him, owning him in every way. He was playing Quentin like a precision instrument, wringing sounds from him and keeping him firmly in check, easing off of his prostate every time he got too close to tipping over the edge. Eliot was utterly, completely, in control of Quentin’s body, even as he chased his own pleasure, constant groans sounding low and rumbling from his chest.

And yet in that moment, despite Eliot running the show, Quentin felt like the singular most powerful person in existence. Because the truth was, Eliot would give him anything he wanted, was hopeless and helpless in his devotion, and Quentin knew it. Relished in it. Knew he’d get to have it _ forever_. Eliot lived to love him in that moment, and Quentin lived to let him.

“I’m gonna come,” Quentin informed him, feeling oddly calm about it, the physical reality of it already tingling along every inch of his limbs, a ball of energy pooling lower and lower in his stomach, in his groin. He couldn’t stop it this time, and knew Eliot wouldn’t ask it of him, not now. He twisted the ring against his finger one final time as Eliot let out a loud, uninhibited groan against the sweaty skin of his neck. The dual sensation swept through him, Eliot’s own love and lust and endless need coming through the magic of the ring, and the pull of his orgasm coming up and through and out of him, his body shuddering uncontrollably even as he writhed himself closer to Eliot, to the source of every indescribable, incredible, incandescent thing he was feeling in that endless moment.

Eliot groaned again, a sound that was almost-but-not-quite Quentin’s name, and his hips snapped hard once, twice, and then went still, his cock buried to the hilt in Quentin’s body. Quentin tightened his arms hard against Eliot’s back, holding him through his orgasm like the precious, perfect thing that he was, and then kept his arms where they were when Eliot finally went limp, his breathing harsh and uneven in the quiet of the room.

“Oh my God,” Quentin said, still shaking. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I want you to let me do that to you every day for the rest of our lives,” Eliot said, like this was a normal thing to want, a small favor he was hoping Quentin might bestow upon him. “Please.”

“I think that would probably actually kill me,” Quentin said, laughing so he wouldn’t cry. “But if you need it that bad, I’m game to give it a try”

Eliot laughed back at that, his whole body shuddering, and then, with a reluctant moan, he shifted, bringing a hand down between their bodies to help pull his softening cock out. He did the clean-up tuts and then settled himself comfortably once again on top of Quentin, a deep, contented sigh sinking his body into limp repose. For a while they were silent together, their heartbeats settling down, their breathing in synch, even and slow.

Eliot’s hands were steady against Quentin’s spine, trapped between his back and the mattress below. Quentin could feel the press of Eliot’s newly adorned ring, and thought his partner (his _ fiance_, holy shit) might be deliberately pushing it against him, like a reminder. “I don’t want to wait,” Eliot said, sleepy and sated, the words muffled in Quentin’s hair.

“Mm?”

“To marry you, Q. I want to do it soon. Just something small, maybe at the farm, like you did with Ari.”

Quentin opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again, a bit surprised. It was taking a while for his brain to come back online. “You’re sure you don’t want something more than that? I always figured you for the giant party type of guy.”

“Maybe in my youth,” Eliot said, a hint of humor in his tone. It dropped away with his next words. “But now… Q, I’ve wanted to marry you so badly, for so long. And I’d never regret anything about our family, but now that we have the chance I just - God, I want to be your husband.”

Quentin swallowed a few times, waiting to be sure he could speak without crying. “I want that too,” he managed, wavering. “I’ve wanted - so much, Eliot. So much.”

“I thought about asking you,” Eliot said, his voice contemplative. “Before Arielle got pregnant. I just - didn’t think we were in a hurry, you know?”

“You were - ” Quentin swallowed, hard. “That early?”

Eliot hummed, half thoughtful, half amused. “I was gone on you before you’d even kissed me, Q. But you knew that.”

There were a lot of things Quentin could have said to that, all of them blubbery and sappy and extremely, unrepentantly _ true_. He wasn’t even sure where to start, but the knowledge that he had as much time as he needed filled up him to the brim, warm and perfectly content.

“So, will you?” Eliot asked. “We can tell the kiddo tomorrow, tell Arielle and Taseer. Maybe end of the month. Just us, Ari’s family… and we could ask Arnold and Ostrich to come by?”

“Oh my God, I love you,” Quentin said, overwhelmed. Because that was at the heart of it, the most important thing. “Yes. I love you. _ Yes_.”

Eliot grinned at him, bright and somehow astonished, like he still couldn’t quite believe that he was being given such a gift. Like _ he _ was the lucky one in this scenario. Unbelievable. How was this his life?

Quentin had to kiss him again. He took his time about it, a slow, syrupy exploration that had Eliot humming happily into his mouth. Quentin took a moment to really appreciate the familiarity of it, the knowledge that this _ was _ his life - that he’d get to have this, today and tomorrow and as many times as he wanted it, for years - _ decades _ \- to come. He’d never really believed he’d make it even this far. He’d never really given it a lot of thought. But a future with Eliot? Yeah. That he could look forward to.

In that moment, it came to him crystal clear that he was going to live for a long time. He was going to grow old. And he was happy.

“I paid for a room in Langdale,” Eliot said, pinching Quentin’s hip in punishment. “I made _ dinner _ reservations. The guys at the tavern are still laughing at me for it, and now I’m going to be a no-show. That’s just _ rude_, Quentin. I can’t believe I’m going to marry such a duplicitous, uncooperative man.”

“You shouldn’t have warned me, then,” Quentin said, smiling as he rubbed his nose through Eliot’s chest hair, smelling the warmth and musk of satisfaction.

Eliot pinched him again, this time on the ass. “Wanted to be sure you’d say yes,” he said, surprisingly solemn.

“Always,” Quentin said. “The answer is always yes. And anyway, our bed is more comfortable than anything they’ve got at the inn. We’ll just go into town tomorrow morning like we originally planned, you big baby.”

Eliot’s hand was still on his ass, and he palmed at it, rubbing and then pressing so Quentin’s hips were canted forward into the cradle of Eliot’s thighs. “That’s assuming I’m able to tear myself away from you long enough to make the trip.”

“A valid concern,” Quentin said, squirming. He wasn’t sure he had enough energy at the moment to do more than cuddle himself into the warmth of Eliot’s body, but he appreciated a good enterprising spirit all the same. “I’ll let you surprise me for our anniversary, okay?”

“How very kind of you,” Eliot said with a sigh, and then he tipped Quentin onto his back and kissed him again, with intent.

* * *

If Quentin had ever daydreamed about getting married, he wouldn't have pictured it like this.

For one thing, he was a man in his late thirties, and he had an eight-year-old son. For another, the mother of said son was standing up in front of the crowd with him, but not as his bride. Eliot and Quentin had actually fought over who got to have Ari as Best Woman, and the issue was only settled when she said she'd conduct the ceremony.

When he'd married Arielle, he'd been focusing more on Eliot than on anything else. It wasn't that the marriage hadn't been real, it just hadn't carried quite the same weight for him. Or, a different weight. In any case, it had been easier to forget about all the people who weren’t in attendance, the first time around.

But today, he was missing his dad. He kept thinking about how his and Eliot's life together might have gone if they'd never walked through the doorway in that clock. Would they have been together? Yes. Or at least he hoped so. But it would have taken them so much longer to get their act together. Quentin would have been anxious and heartsick over Alice. Eliot would have had to discuss it with Fen.

But Quentin could have brought Eliot to meet his father. They could have had an awkward, but still sweet dinner together, where Ted Sr. pulled out baby pictures and Eliot had to be reminded several times to call Quentin's father 'Ted' instead of 'Mr. Coldwater.' And they would have done things in the right order, they'd have talked about having kids and made informed decisions and -

All of that was bullshit, probably. Maybe. It was only natural that on a day filled with such heightened emotions, Quentin would feel wistful for the things he couldn't have.

But it was also easy enough, when the moment came, to think about everything he _ did _ have. The ceremony was almost incidental; all of the important things they had to say to each other had been said long ago. But the gift of this, of being able to stand up in front of a community to which he really belonged, and to tell them all that Eliot was his chosen love, was not to be dismissed lightly.

Even if he hadn’t appreciated the gift of it for his own sake, the look of shining wonder and gratitude in Eliot’s eyes would have been enough to make it all worth it.

* * *

**ELIOT**

Eliot had known he’d be a mess on the day of his wedding. Taseer had been somewhat surprised when, over drinks with Eliot a few days before the ceremony, Eliot had warned him about the blubbering he knew was coming. He’d raised an eyebrow at Eliot, lifting his drink in a salute, and then, after taking a sip, said: “Are we sure it’s you we need to be worried about?”

He flicked his eyes over to Quentin, who was laughing with Arielle over in the corner of the tavern.

“Oh, no. Quentin’s going to be cool as a cucumber.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Taseer said.

Eliot laughed, taking a sip of his own drink. It wasn’t very good, but then no alcohol he’d ever tasted in Fillory passed muster, compared with the ambrosia of his distant past as Brakebills’ resident lush and bartender extraordinaire. “Don’t worry about it. The point is, I’m going to cry like a baby, and you, my friend, are not allowed to judge me for it.”

“When it’s my turn with Arielle, I can assure you I’ll be in the same position,” Taseer said, nodding in grave solidarity.

The thought of that, of attending Arielle and Taseer’s wedding someday soon, with Quentin, _ as his husband_, was enough to make the tears prick at the corner of Eliot’s eyes already. He was, he knew, seriously, seriously, fucked.

And he _ had _cried, during the ceremony. He’d cried when Arielle had spoken, and when Quentin had said his short and sweet vows. He’d blubbered through his own words, and had to keep his jaw locked tight to hold back shuddering breaths when Teddy handed them their rings to give back to each other. But Quentin had cried too, at least a little bit. So maybe that was okay.

After the ceremony itself was over, the dancing commenced, and Eliot held Quentin through most of the night, refusing to let him go for anyone but Arielle, who took him on a spin while Taseer indulged Eliot in a dance as well. For a while the four of them danced together, bouncing to a jaunty beat while Teddy spun in uncoordinated, enthusiastic circles between them, weaving in and out of limbs with a smile lighting up his whole face. Arielle was a lithe, graceful dancer. Her son, for better or for worse, had inherited his father’s sense of rhythm.

And then it was the two of them again. Eliot and Quentin. Eliot and his husband. Swaying to the music, Eliot let himself float entirely on the feeling, on the knowing and the certainty and the _ peace _ that he felt with Q, and only Q. Had he been the praying type, he might have offered a word of thanks to the gods. Instead, he pressed a kiss against Quentin’s temple, overwhelmed with tenderness, and then left his mouth there, brushing along Quentin’s skin and burying his nose in his soft hair. He remembered his own first wedding, and thought with a pang of familiar longing of Fen. He wished her happiness. He wished world domination for Margo. He wished peace for Alice and success for Julia and he wished prosperity for Arielle and Taseer and Teddy and the Ashmores and Doady and Ostrich and Arnold and every damn person he’d ever cared for in his entire life. A life filled with people he cared for, who cared for him back. Against every expectation he’d ever had for himself, for his own life and what he could reasonably get from it, he was _ here_. At the outer reaches of happiness, beyond what he’d even known to hope for.

“Are you being maudlin, or just thoughtful?” Quentin asked him, tugging him even closer. What they were doing could hardly be classified as dancing anymore. The music, Eliot vaguely noticed, had changed to something upbeat and cheerful, but the two of them were still swaying slowly, their feet planted and their arms wrapped tight around each other.

“It’s not maudlin. Just. I can’t believe this, Q.” He heard how breathy and astonished his own voice sounded, and didn’t care.

“Me neither,” Quentin said, without needing to ask what he meant. He sighed, burrowing his face into the front of Eliot’s vest for a moment. Then he pulled back, lifting his hands away from Eliot’s waist and squeezing his ring hard against his finger. His eyes shuttered, a peaceful smile suffusing his face as he felt the swirl of emotions run through him. “God, I could get addicted to that,” he said, arms back around Eliot at once.

“You have the real thing right here,” Eliot reminded him. “I promise that later tonight, I will expound to you in great detail _ exactly _ how I feel about you. It’s just - there are children present.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Quentin said, suddenly casual, “Taseer asked me if we grabbed Teddy’s notebook for school.” Quentin paused, pressing a kiss over Eliot’s heart. “I couldn’t remember.”

“Yeah, I packed it, it’s in the green bag with that creepy stuffed animal you made for him.”

“It’s not _ creepy_,” Quentin scoffed, digging his fingers into Eliot’s waist in retribution. “_You’re _ creepy.” The stuffed animal in question had been Quentin’s attempt at a giant eagle. It looked more like a dog with wings, even with the aid of magic in the construction. Quentin could mend anything with a level of detail and skill that left Eliot breathless with wonder, but he was shit at art projects.

Eliot smiled way too wide at Quentin’s feeble retort, but didn’t press the point, nudging the top of Quentin’s head with his chin until Q lifted up to kiss him again. “Hmm,” he hummed directly into Quentin’s mouth. “Unfortunately, Q, you seem to be stuck with me, creepy or not.”

Quentin looked up at him, and shook his head, his mouth turning down into the tiniest of frowns. “You know what’s just completely rude?”

“What?”

“This is _ our wedding_, which means we can’t leave early to commence with ravishment.”

“I sort of think we can do whatever we want,” Eliot countered, voice low and suggestive. “It’s _ our wedding_. But yes, I suppose it would be inconsiderate of me to sneak you off for a quickie in the guestroom. The good news is, in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got a week of nothing but _ ravishment _ ahead of us, baby Q.”

Taseer and Arielle were keeping Teddy so they could have a honeymoon. A honeymoon where they were not going on a single fucking daytrip, thank you very much. Eliot liked the idea of ensconcing Quentin away in the little world they’d made for themselves. He’d had enough exploration of Fillory’s natural wonders to last him several lifetimes.

Quentin smiled up at him, and Eliot let the feeling of pure, unadulterated_ wanting _ pool low in his stomach and then dissipate, settling instead for another feather-light kiss, and another, and another, melting and languid and slow with promise, simmering with anticipation. Even as he heard Rodney Jr. let out a whistle of appreciation from across the field at their increasingly graphic display, Eliot sunk fully into the universe of Quentin’s arms, content with that and nothing else.

They had all the time in the world.


	23. Epilogue - In Which There is Not an Ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am made of emotions? I cannot believe this story has come to a close! Thank you all so very much for sticking with me along the journey.
> 
> Quentin and Eliot are together and in love and living their best lives, y'all. We make the rules now.

_ Forty Years Later _

**QUENTIN**

"Do you ever think about them?"

Eliot’s voice was low and contemplative, as he pressed a tile piece into the mosaic with shaking hands.

Quentin, who had just been thinking about something his youngest granddaughter had said to him the previous week, about learning magic of her own, blinked down at Eliot from the ladder, wondering if his husband had been reading his mind again, as he seemed to do so often.

"The grandkids?"

"No.” There was a hint of sharpness in his tone, which Quentin easily read as discomfort, though of what type, he couldn’t be sure. “Our friends, from our lives before."

Oh. Huh. Eliot was in a reminiscing kind of mood. That had been happening a lot recently, and Quentin tried not to think too hard about why. Old people thought about their pasts a lot. That was a thing that happened. It was just… Quentin wasn’t ready yet, to stop thinking about his _ future_.

"I dream about them sometimes," Quentin said. This was true - his friends' faces were hazy now, but in sleep he could still hear the exact pitch of Julia's crackly voice, and feel Alice's hand warm on his arm.

Eliot shook his head, looking weary and heartsick. Quentin thought about making his hobbling way back down the ladder so he could fold Eliot into his arms, but it would take him an awful long time to get back up again, and they still had a lot of work to get done that day. Intead, he stepped up two rungs so he had a better view of the puzzle from the top down, squinting at the half finished design. Before he could make his mind up, Eliot cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Do you think pimples is going to _ pop _the question, make an honest woman out of Margo?"

Quentin laughed. Their granddaughter Margaret (known as Margo by most) was being courted by a young fellow who, while he did have a slight acne problem, was really quite sweet. "You're awful, El," he said. "And yes, I do think that _ Gerald _will be making her an offer."

"Ugh. Gerald. Who names their kid Gerald?"

"Did you forget that you married a guy who's named Quentin?"

"Yeah, but you don't have acne, so it all evens out."

"You're incorrigible," Quentin said. Then he sighed. "Are we finishing this pattern today?"

Eliot was silent for a moment, and then Quentin saw his shoulders slump a bit in defeat. "I'm exhausted."

Quentin nodded, mostly to himself. He'd seen the shake in Eliot's hands, more and more frequent nowadays, and knew it was best to take it easy for the rest of the afternoon. "Okay, coming down," he said, and began the increasingly arduous process of descending the ladder. Eliot stood to meet him at the bottom, pulling him straight into a hug. Quentin sank into the embrace, just as happy to be in Eliot's arms as he had been when they were young men, barely starting out on their life. "Hmm. What's this for?"

"I'm celebrating, Q," Eliot said, his lips dipping down to kiss the top of Quentin's head. "Every time you make it down that thing without breaking your neck, I feel like throwing a party."

"Har har," Quentin said, smiling into Eliot's shoulder. "You want me to retire the ladder?"

"You want me to stop having a heart attack every time you climb up there?"

"Fine," Quentin said, mock irritated. "If you're so eager to make me into an old man..."

"That ship has long since sailed, my darling."

Quentin whacked him lightly on the back, and then lifted his head for a kiss that Eliot was already ducking to give him.

* * *

A couple of weeks later, they were working on another pattern, whiling away the morning hours by discussing their plans for the weekend - the whole family was coming over for a reunion. Ari and Taseer were even making the trip down from his estate.

"If we're both feeling up for it, I thought we might get a cart, head into town to pick up the food ourselves, instead of having it delivered. It's been ages since we were out and about," Quentin said, a couple of tiles stacked in his hands.

"Maybe," Eliot said, giving him a smile. Quentin didn't push him - he knew that Eliot's body was deteriorating faster than his own, as much as he tried his hardest not to think about it most days. Going into Langdale would be fun, if they could manage it, but they had everything they needed right here. Teddy and his family were never far away, and they really could manage on their own for most things.

"Hey Q?" Eliot said suddenly, an odd catch in his throat. Quentin spun to face him. He was looking contemplative, his mouth turned down into a frown.

"Yeah?"

"I - " Eliot started. He blinked a few times. "Never mind." He sounded weird, _ off_, in a way that Quentin couldn't quite place.

"El? You okay?" Quentin asked. Eliot took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut, and shook his head like he was trying to dislodge something.

"Yeah, yes, I'm just - going to sit for a second." He came forward towards Quentin and brushed a hand along the side of his face, the pads of his fingers catching on Q's beard. He looked at him for a long, searching moment, eyes glinting behind his glasses. A tiny smile curled up the corner of his lips. Then he turned around and went to sit down.

In the moment, it didn't raise any immediate alarm bells. They both needed breaks more and more often as they got older, so if Eliot needed to sit down for a few minutes, Quentin would finish mapping out the latest pattern on his own. No big deal.

It was just minutes later, of course, when he turned around to find Eliot still and silent in his chair.

Quentin didn't feel panicked. He didn't rush forward to check, because he didn't need to. He didn't feel even a hint of fear or denial or anything - he - knew. Right away, instant and sure as anything he'd ever felt. And just as he said Eliot's name, a choking sadness rising up inside of him, just as the fault lines started to appear in his heart, he realized that Eliot had known it was coming. He'd been trying to memorize his face one last time.

It was just like him to keep quiet. He never wanted Quentin to worry.

* * *

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

* * *

_100 years later _ / _ 50 years earlier_

**QUENTIN**

The letter was in Quentin’s own handwriting, which was... trippy, for a number of reasons. He couldn’t remember writing it. Because he _ hadn’t _ written it. Thanks to Margo. And then there were the actual words on the page, which were even more bizarre than just the fact of the letter to begin with. There was something calm about them, self-assured and settled, in a way that Quentin envied about this future self that had never existed. Or had he? They had the fruit, they had the letter. What did that mean? Time travel made his brain hurt.

He and Eliot sat down side by side, an automatic gesture, familiar and true. It really was so good to see Eliot again. He’d missed him when they’d been apart. It had been so long.

And then, something happened. Nothing remarkable, nothing dramatic. It just - happened.

When it hit him, it was like he'd always known. And also like it couldn't possibly be true. At first, he felt alone, like he was swirling around in a miasma of thoughts that really just could not belong to him. They were the thoughts of a different Quentin, a happier, older, smarter Quentin, one who had fought for peace and achieved it. And that wasn't him, it couldn't possibly be.

And then there was a pressure, light against his arm, and he knew without looking that Eliot had reached out a hand to touch him. He understood the instinct, that need for contact, just to know that another human being in the world was with him, was experiencing this with him. Even as the memories swirled within him, filling up spaces inside of him he hadn't quite realized were empty, the only thing he could really focus on was the last time he'd seen Eliot.

Not - not _ this _Eliot, his friend Eliot, recently banished from Fillory, the one whose wife and mysteriously adult daughter Fray had just shown up in the cottage, the one who he hadn't seen at all for months before that. Not that Eliot.

_His _ Eliot. The one he knew as a part of his own heartbeat. The one who he'd been talking to - they'd been talking about a family reunion, and El had needed to sit down... He remembered that. He remembered -

"I got... so _ old_," Eliot said. He sounded almost offended, and then Quentin really did remember. It slammed into him, the grief as fresh as it had been the day it had happened.

"You _ died_."

"I died," Eliot agreed. "You had a wife."

Yes. he had. Arielle Ashmore. Ari. Holy shit. Holy fuck. They'd gotten married. He'd married Eliot too, of course, but that had been much later, and Ari had been there with her second husband. And - Ted. His son. Their son. Quentin was a father. He'd been a father for longer than he'd been alive. He'd had a whole family, a son and a daughter-in-law and grandkids and a great-granddaughter, friends, a community. A whole - life.

"And we had a family," he said, because that seemed to be the most essential fact, buried somewhere in his unraveling brain. "How do we remember that?"

"I don't know," Eliot said. Quentin felt like he might be about to throw up, but Eliot seemed mostly calm, his voice maybe slightly wobbly but not unduly panicked. Quentin turned to look at him, dropping the letter he was holding carelessly to the ground.

"I - El - holy shit." This was inadequate, but what was a person supposed to say?

"Q," Eliot said. He sounded contemplative, like he was working on remembering a grocery list he'd written down but forgotten to bring along to the store. "Q, do you remember... hmm. I was just thinking, did our granddaughter marry that pimply faced red head?" Then he blinked a few times, like he was coming out of a dream. "I think I... died before I could find out."

"Um." Quentin's throat was closing up now. He felt panicked and devastated and overjoyed and terrified all at once. Because Eliot remembered the same thing. It was them, it was real, it was them, it was - "Um. Yeah, she did. The wedding was beautiful. I gave her your ring to wear, I hope you don't mind," he said. Then he blinked, because - the ring wasn't real. Eliot had died, and Quentin had worked the ring off of his hand before he'd buried him, but none of that was... He shook his head, dislodging the hints of desolation, and kept talking. "They had a daughter. And I think Margo was pregnant again when I - "

Eliot's hand shot out and he grabbed on to Quentin's wrist, hard. "When you died," he said, voice shaking hard. The hazy, idyll tone to his words had vanished. "You died too. Quentin - Quentin, fuck, how long were you alive after I - "

"I don't know exactly," he hedged. "But.... a while. Years. Maybe ten."

"Fuck. God, Q, I'm - sorry - I - I can't even - "

"They named the baby Arielle," Quentin rushed on. He didn't need to hear Eliot apologize for getting old and passing away. This situation was weird enough as it was. "Our great-granddaughter."

"Did Ari get to meet her?" Eliot whispered. Hearing him say her name was like a blow straight to the solar-plexus. He wanted to gasp, fall to the ground, tear his hair out. Instead he just answered.

"Yeah," Quentin said, aware for the first time that there were tears streaming down his cheeks. "She did. We called the baby - " he choked off, swallowed a few times and tried to get control of himself enough to continue. "We called the baby Elle for short."

Eliot made a choked off sound to match Quentin's own. Quentin thought maybe he'd been trying to laugh, but he couldn't be sure.

"I can't decide if I'm about to pass out or throw up," Eliot said. He was still holding Quentin's wrist in his hand, and he tugged on it suddenly, pulling Quentin towards him. He turned and then they were hugging, gripping each other tight and gasping out ragged breaths into each other's shoulders. "It's too much," Eliot said. "It's too much, I can't - there's too much in my head, it's all - "

"I'm in love with you," Quentin said. In his own ears, his voice sounded blank, almost disbelieving. "I'm in love with you and I forgot it - all of it - "

"It's erased," Eliot said, trembling. "Our whole lives, everything, Q, we - worked so hard, and it's just - "

"No. It has to be real," Quentin said. "Teddy - all of it. It has to be real, I can't - "

"But it's not, it never happened - "

"Fuck that." Quentin pulled away from the hug. Because he knew this man - his husband - better than anyone, and he had to head off this major freak-out before it could really pick up steam. And because handling Eliot's panic made it easier to control his own. "El, do you love me?"

"Yes," Eliot said automatically. But then he blinked, and bit his lip, hard. He was still gripping Quentin's arms, like he was afraid to let go of him. "But that doesn't mean it happened, Q, I loved you before any of that."

"It's not the same and you know it. We were together for fifty years. That's not the kind of shit you can just hand-wave away."

"So what exactly are you saying, here?" Eliot said.

"I don't fucking know, I'm freaking out," Quentin said. Eliot gave a nervous little laugh, and then his face crumpled, tears rolling down his cheeks.

"Oh my God, Quentin. What the actual fuck."

"Yeah," Quentin said. "I know. I mean - what do we - how are we meant to handle - "

"Do we - like - are we supposed to - " Eliot said, and he swallowed hard. "Q, I _ love _ you."

"God, me too," Quentin said. He was giddy with it, and he wanted to let that feeling swell up and over and through him and erase all of the rest. But he kept thinking about Alice. Not just Alice, but - but - _ Alice_, and Jules, and the quest - a whole life here, a whole life that Eliot was certainly a part of, but not - not like _ that_, not as a partner in that way. Maybe he’d thought about it, but it had never _ happened_. Right? And then on the other hand there was Eliot, sitting right in front of him, staring at him with tears in his eyes and longing on every inch of his face. But Eliot - was married, for one thing, and Eliot definitely didn't love him, that was fucking crazy.

But it wasn't. It had happened.

Quentin felt the strength of certainty inside of him, a warm hot coal simmering in his stomach. There was just so much - nothing made sense and everything hurt, but he thought that if he could just get his brain to calm down, he might realize he was really, really happy right now.

"Q?" Eliot asked, his eyes darting over his face.

Quentin wanted to kiss him, maybe more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life. But instead he took a deep breath and reached out his hand. Eliot took it in his own instantly, twining their fingers together. "I think," Quentin said. "That we've just been injected with fifty years worth of emotions, and that we should probably sleep on it. You know, give ourselves time to digest this before anything else."

"Q," Eliot said, opening his mouth and snapping it shut again, like he had no idea what he wanted to say. Quentin knew the feeling. And then Eliot swallowed again, blinking his eyes a few times, miserable and unsure. "Okay, I - I mean, if that's what you want."

"It's not - I have no fucking idea what I want," Quentin said. Eliot was squeezing his hand very hard. "Processing just seems like a reasonable, responsible thing to do."

"Are we reasonable and responsible?" Eliot asked, raising an eyebrow.

"How the hell should I know?" Quentin said, smiling at Eliot for being so - Eliot. And then, before he'd decided if this was a good idea or the beginning of a total train-wreck, he saw something urgent flicker across Eliot’s face, and then he was leaning in to kiss him.

He gripped Quentin's face in his hands and he kissed him with every ounce of devotion and desperation and desire in the world.

And there was clarity. There was clarity in a world turned otherwise to chaos. Quentin knew how to kiss this man; he'd done it for so long, for so many years, too many times to count - he tilted his head, brought his hands up to tangle in Eliot's hair, shifted his entire body closer, into Eliot's orbit. Eliot's lips glided across his with precision, his tongue curled forward and Quentin opened to meet him. There were no words for this, for this feeling, this knowing and peace.

"Okay," Quentin said eventually, when they pulled back to breathe. "Okay, yeah. Yes. We're okay."

"Yeah," Eliot agreed, pressing their foreheads together. He sounded dazed. "God, Q. I love you so much."

"I - El, I - " he started to reply, his face flushing and his skin vibrating with every emotion at once, but then -

"Holy shit," a voice sounded from across the room. "Were you two just sucking face in here?"

They broke apart enough to turn their heads and see Margo marching into the room, her jaw dropped open in astonishment, her hands on her hips. Eliot made another inarticulate sound, again maybe intended for a laugh, and buried his head into Quentin's neck, shaking with a mixture of mirth and grief.

"Hey, Margo," Quentin said, his voice strangled. He kept his arms around Eliot. "Um. Come over here, would you? We have something we need to tell you."

* * *

**ELIOT**

The records room in Castle Whitespire was dusty and neglected, and Eliot felt a spark of amusement at the thought of what Toramond Pickwick would have thought if he could have seen the legacy of his hard work. Then, there was a pinch of grief somewhere deep inside of him as his thoughts slid naturally over to Taseer, and then to Ari, and - nope. No, he wasn't thinking about Teddy. He'd spent the entirety of last night crying in Quentin's arms, too broken and confused and hurt to comfort Quentin, who had been crying on him right back.

The grief didn't feel like - normal grief, somehow, to Eliot. He wasn't sad the way he'd be sad if someone he loved had died. Although he supposed that was the closest analogy. Margo had certainly been tip-toeing around him and Q like they were in mourning, and he couldn't exactly blame her, after the way they'd blubbered out the whole story to her the day before, clutching at each other and weeping the whole way through.

Everything about their life in Fillory felt strange in a way that was indescribable. Margo, for example - he remembered now that he'd missed her, that he'd grown old and died and never got to see her, that they'd been separated for their lifetimes. But here, now, it had only been a couple of days since he'd seen her. The memory of missing someone wasn't the same thing as living it, and he supposed it was the same for everything that had happened in his lifetime-that-never-was. He remembered being a father, but he'd never lived it. He remembered being Quentin Coldwater's husband, remembered the taste of him, the feel of his body, but he'd never lived it. It had never really happened.

Right?

"My head hurts already," Quentin said suddenly, and Eliot took a moment to wonder if he'd suddenly developed psychic abilities. They were holding hands, and it hadn't occurred to Eliot to wonder if that was weird or not. It didn't feel weird. But now he dropped Q's hand, because he saw what he meant: in Whitespire's records room, there were boxes upon boxes of files, stacked up nearly to the ceiling in precarious towers.

"I miss magic," Eliot groaned, thinking about the process of digging through all of these records by hand.

Quentin turned to him, a little frown on his perfect lips. "We don't have to do this today, you know. Or - I mean, I suppose we don't have to do this ever, if we - "

"I need to know, Q," Eliot cut him off. "And you do, too. Are you forgetting that I know you?"

Quentin gave him a look, an aching sort of expression, and Eliot's stomach flipped over. "Yeah," Quentin said. "You do know me."

"Can I kiss you again?" Eliot said, without meaning to. He still felt off-kilter, uncertain about what was supposed to come next for them.

"Here, in the records room?" Quentin said. "How scandalous." He was smiling, and he turned to face Eliot dead on, throwing his arms up around his shoulders like this was something they did every day.

And it was. They did. Every day. For fifty goddamn years.

Fuck.

Quentin was the best thing he'd ever tasted. He licked at his mouth and Quentin opened to him automatically, because he knew - they both knew this. It was freaky, in the best kind of way, and before Eliot knew it, he had Quentin pressed up against a wall, swallowing the little sighs of pleasure he was making directly against his lips. "You're perfect," Eliot said to him after a while, reluctantly parting their lips and keeping their foreheads pressed together. "I want this for the rest of my life."

Quentin went still against him and then shuddered out a breath, sliding their noses together for a moment and then pressing forward further, burying his head in Eliot's shoulder, arms tight around him. "Me too. Thank God."

"Five decades and we're not sick of each other," Eliot said. "That's got to be fate."

"Not fate," Quentin disagreed, his lips moving against the skin of Eliot's neck in a highly distracting manner. "We worked hard for that."

"Should we - " Eliot coughed. "Should we find out if that hard work payed off?" He pulled away, gesturing to the boxes.

And so they searched. Despite the towering stacks and the general mustiness of the records room, there was a semblance of organization, and they managed to find the boxes related to roughly the right time period and geographical location without too much trouble. They sat down, cross-legged, and started flipping through the crackled and weather-worn pages.

"Do you think it's there?" Eliot asked as they worked.

"The cottage?" Quentin said, frowning as he tried to read a bit of faded ink on a page he'd just pulled out. "I don't know. Do you want - "

"Yeah," Eliot said. "I mean, we've got other shit to worry about, obviously. Key quest and all that. But yeah, I - eventually, I want to look. See if we can find our house."

"Okay," Quentin said. "You know, we could always let someone else take the next leg of the quest. We worked pretty damn hard for the last key."

"Oh, please, we have to do the next part. I seem to recall something about a mission out on the high seas." He shot Quentin a teasing smile. Quentin had always gotten endearingly excited about boats.

Quentin rolled his eyes but grinned back, and then his eyes flickered down. "For all we know, this next part is going to be no simpler than the mosaic. The last key took us an entire lifetime to get."

"And then you gave it away," Eliot said. He had been trying to keep up the teasing lilt to his tone, but it didn't come out that way. Last night, somewhere in between all of the weeping and hugging, Quentin had filled Eliot in on the end of their mosaic quest, and on the decade of life he'd lived after handing over the key. And also the letter he'd written to Margo, a long-shot they were both still shocked to discover had actually worked.

"If Jane hadn't had it, then - "

"I know, Q," Eliot said, pausing in his search to put a hand on his arm. "You saved all of us. Everything - our whole lives. It's because of you, giving Jane what she needed."

"The Beauty of all Life," Quentin said, his voice all warbled, and Eliot swallowed at the sound of it. "We saved all of us. It was us, the life we built." They stared at each other for a long moment, and Eliot considered pushing the boxes away and launching himself at Quentin, but he controlled the impulse, looking back down at the musty old records. A name flashed up at him -

"Oh shit, Q."

"Did you find - "

"Look, it's Taseer!"

Quentin practically launched himself across the floor at Eliot much in the way Eliot had been imagining moments before, but his hands were gentle when he took the page, staring down at it in reverence. "Taseer Pickwick, m. Arielle Ashmore - oh God. Oh, God, she was real."

Eliot pointed his shaking finger a little lower, at a smudged name underneath Arielle's own. "Theodore Rupert Coldwater-Waugh." Just saying the name out loud made it feel real to him in a way he didn't have room inside of him to process. He stared at the crackling parchment for a long, breathless moment, Quentin beside him, frozen at the sight as well. He traced the line down from Teddy's name to see Margaret and Juliette, saw Juliette's name connected to a smudged name that might have been Alexander or Alexandra something-or-other... Margaret's connected to her husband and then another carefully scripted "Arielle" below their joined names. His great-granddaughter. _ We called the baby Elle for short_, Quentin had said.

"El," Quentin said, grabbing his wrist. "El, oh my God."

"What?" Eliot said, looking up from the names, startled.

"The generations keep going," Quentin said, his own gaze still riveted to the report. "We - they could be - we have fucking _ descendants_, El."

"Well, _ you _do," Eliot pointed out. "I mean, just like - bloodline-wise."

"Whatever." Quentin waved a hand, dismissing that. "We could meet our great-great-great grandchildren. We could - there could be like - family stories about us."

He looked so fucking cute, his face all flushed with excitement, his eyes sparking with a wild energy that Eliot recognized from a lifetime of happy moments. "There could be," he agreed. "How could it have been - I mean, how does this work, though? I thought Margo erased the timeline, but clearly..."

"But we remember," Quentin said, taking the piece of paper from Eliot's hand and gingerly setting it aside. "And I mean - she got my letter, and the keys, so... I don't know. I suppose I should probably care more about how this is possible, but I honestly really, really don't."

"Me neither," Eliot admitted, raising a hand to brush a strand of Quentin's hair back from his face. He loved doing that. He'd never get tired of it.

For a moment they were both quiet, just letting the enormity of the situation sink over them both. And then Quentin cleared his throat and straightened his spine, staring at Eliot with a familiar look of slightly anxious determination. Eliot, trained from a lifetime of such expressions on Quentin's face, stayed quiet to give him the chance to formulate what he wanted to say.

"El," Quentin said. "When we - got married - do you remember?"

"Yes," Eliot said. His chest felt tight. It should have been a scary, or even disturbing thought. He'd married Fen, after all, and as fucked up as the circumstances had been, he'd wanted to be a good husband to her. And Quentin was his friend. His good friend - maybe his best friend, if you didn't count Margo, of course. He should have been, at the very least, incredulous at the thought of having married him, of having grown old by his side.

It was like there were two Quentins. Two Eliots. Two lives. And they kept sliding and slipping past each other, a confusing and jarring mismatch of feeling.

One second, he'd look at Quentin and think how good it was to see him, since he'd been in Fillory and Q had been on Earth. He'd allow himself a wistful fantasy or two, trying to remember how Quentin had kissed, the one and only time they'd been in bed together, indulging in his harmless crush the way he'd been doing since he met this adorable little nerd.

And then the second layer would drop over the first, shocking technicolor into his world and he'd see Quentin. _ Quentin _ . His fucking soulmate. He knew every inch of this man's body, every nuance of his voice and his laugh and his breath. He knew every detail of his life, his habits, his wants, his deepest fears and doubts and dreams and goals. And Eliot should have been scared. He should have been _ so _scared. But he wasn't.

"It's just - " Quentin was still talking, and Eliot blinked, letting the sliding layers of Quentin settle in to one whole, sitting right in front of him. "On our wedding day, I remember thinking that I was so happy, and I loved you so much, and - and I wished my dad could have been there. And Jules, and Margo, and everyone. You know? We - we didn't have a chance to have them with us, for obvious reasons." He stopped talking like that was the end of the thought, biting gently at his lower lip in a way that had always made Eliot want to kiss him, long before he'd been allowed such a gift.

Eliot stared at him, at the nervous shift of his shoulders, the way his hair fell in a curtain around his face.

"Are you asking me to marry you?" he blurted. Quentin's eyes snapped up to meet him.

"No! Yes. I don't know."

Eliot snorted out a laugh, because his other option was bursting into tears, and he really didn't want to do that again.

"Oh, shut up," Quentin said. "I'm just - saying. Maybe one day. You know?"

"Okay," Eliot said, still feeling remarkably not terrified. "Okay, sure."

"Okay, sure?" Quentin repeated, his face blank and his eyes bright.

"Were you expecting me to say no?" Eliot asked. He shuffled forward amid the sprawl of old records and boxes, so that his knees were touching Quentin's.

"I have no idea," Quentin said. "I'm living like - half in denial right now?"

"Yeah," Eliot echoed. "I get that. Like you said - maybe one day?"

Quentin nodded, his lips tight together. "God, I think I might be happier than I've ever been in my whole life, but I'm also just - everything hurts so much."

Eliot's fingers were buzzing with the need to touch him, and he suddenly realized that he could. Leaning forward, he pulled on Quentin's wrist until Quentin had slid closer to him. Eliot brushed his fingers along Quentin's jaw, cupped his hand around the side of his face, and tilted to kiss him.

Quentin opened to him immediately, a soft moan slipping in the space between them. It shot through Eliot like fire, as his brain and body remembered thousands of other kisses, a lifetime of them, the way Quentin's body felt pressed against his own.

Eliot needed to be touching him, all of him, right that second. There was an urgency to it that wasn't even entirely sexual, just some sort of imperative natural instinct, the knowledge that their bodies belonged to one another. It was just shy of too much. His skin was on fire. A small part of him almost wanted to push Quentin away, to seek equilibrium in solitude. But a much bigger part of him wanted just the opposite. Luckily, Quentin didn't seem to mind it when Eliot, keeping their lips connected, tugged firmly at Quentin's waist, sliding him directly onto his lap.

"Hey," Quentin said, breaking the kiss, his eyes darting around Eliot's face like he couldn't decide where to look.

"Hey," Eliot said, and then pressed forward, capturing Quentin's lips against his again. Q made a perfect and muffled sound of relief that told Eliot the two of them were in the exact same frame of mind, and then sank into the kiss with immediate abandon, opening his lips and wrapping his arms hard around Eliot's shoulders. It was - a lot, again. Maybe too much. Eliot's heart was thumping so hard in his chest that he was sure Quentin could hear it, even over the sound of their mingled breathing and the rustle of cloth as both of them struggled to push and pull one another in closer. It was an immediate thing, the wanting - the needing - he had a hand up under Quentin's shirt to feel his bare skin before he'd been aware of the impulse, and Quentin responded with a fucking criminal moan, directly against his lips, before tearing his mouth away and dropping his face to the crook of Eliot's neck, lips and tongue working against his pulse point.

"We should be in a bedroom," Eliot said, horrified in a distant sort of way to hear how breathy and needy his own voice had sounded. Last night they hadn't gotten past a few sloppy kisses in between crying jags, but right now Eliot was having trouble convincing himself that having sex right here on top of decades-old Fillorian paperwork was actually not a super great idea.

Quentin nipped lightly at Eliot's jaw on his way back to his mouth, kissing him again, wet and deep and determined. "I don't want to stop touching you," he gasped, and then squirmed his hips forward to line them up, nearly tilting Eliot backwards in his haste to get impossibly closer.

"I never want you to stop touching me," Eliot said, the words truer than he wanted to admit. "I want - fuck, I want everything, I feel like - "

"We have time," Quentin reminded him, his breathing harsh but his lips soft, gentling as they moved up Eliot's jawline, then across a cheekbone, a dusting of touches across his nose and then his forehead. "We have more time than we ever thought we'd get."

"Yeah," Eliot said, awed by the gift of it. "Okay. Yeah. Okay. Fuck." Quentin was laughing at him, but Eliot didn't even care. "Q, let me take you to bed."

* * *

And later -

"Jesus fucking goddamn Christ," Eliot said, strained, as Quentin rolled off of him and collapsed, limp and sweaty and perfect, on the bed.

"Some things are kind of hazy," Quentin said between panting breaths. "But that I remembered."

"God," Eliot said. "That was - "

"The best sex you've ever had?" Quentin suggested, elbowing Eliot in the ribs and then squirming closer so he could rest with his chin propped up on Eliot's shoulder.

"In this body? In this timeline? Fuck yeah. But I mean, you're only competing against yourself, at this point."

Quentin laughed, a giddy and freeing sound that made Eliot want to kiss him again. His limbs felt like rubber. Maybe he'd be able to move them in a second. "It's the same for me."

"I sure hope so," Eliot groused. "I really don't want to have to kill any of your exes."

"You're not even the jealous type," Quentin said, like he was reminding him. He ducked his head down to kiss Eliot's collarbone. "Or at least I don't remember that, from before."

"Maybe not jealous, exactly, it's more like... it's just different here, isn't it?" Eliot said, musing once again on his emotions and motivations from a version of himself that couldn't decide how real it wanted to be. "I mean - I was so sure of you, Quentin. I was so sure, there, that you loved me and that I - like - deserved that. I don't know if I can replicate..."

"That's okay," Quentin said, cutting him off. "That's - honestly - same. I can't just be the person I was there. I can't just go back to that, so if that's what you want - "

"I want you," Eliot said, and he ignored the rubbery feeling of his arms, lifting them up to wrap around Quentin, holding him tight. "I am completely solidly sure on that one point, if nothing else."

"I missed you so much," Quentin said. "After you died. I missed you so much."

"Were you okay?" Eliot asked, a lump in his throat. Selfishly, he was so goddamn glad he didn't have a memory of that, of living on without Quentin. He hoped he never would.

"I - I mean, no?" Quentin said, shrugging and burrowing himself further into Eliot's side. "I don't know. I had Teddy and the rest of the family. I was - it was - it fucking sucked, but I didn't like - throw myself off a cliff or anything."

"Jesus. Bad fucking example, Q."

"Oh shit, I forgot about that."

"So did I, until you just said that," Eliot said. "You fell off a cliff and then a giant bird..."

"Arnold!" Quentin said, voice bright with sudden excitement. "Holy shit, all of those crazy huge birds were like - immortal, or super long-lived, right? What if they're alive?"

"Our to-do list is growing more robust by the minute," Eliot said, brushing a hand down Quentin's back, feeling the softness of slightly sweaty skin under his fingertips. He was so happy he felt legitimately high. "Find our cottage, track down our many times great grandchildren, punch Tick Pickwick in the face, find Arnold - "

"Wait, why are we punching Tick?" Quentin interrupted.

"I don't know. For being Toramond's descendant? Just thought it would maybe be fun."

Quentin laughed, a bright and carefree sound that warmed Eliot down to his toes. "I think I'm going to have to call veto on that one."

"You're not the boss of me," Eliot said, curling his hand over Quentin's hip, stroking a thumb across it in a spot he remembered Quentin loved to be touched.

"Aren't I?" Quentin lifted his head up from Eliot's shoulder and ducked to press a series of soft kisses against his jaw. "I bet I could persuade you from the path of violence."

"You could persuade me to do literally anything you wanted," Eliot said, honest. "I'm so seriously fucked."

"Not yet, you aren't," Quentin said, sucking against Eliot's pulse point. "But give me a couple more minutes and I'll see what I can do for you."

"Oh, god," Eliot said, and he tightened his hand against Quentin's hip, pulling on him to settle him entirely on top, so they were pressed together. "Yes, please."

"Okay, but then we've got to get some sleep," Quentin said, sounding surprisingly collected and pragmatic, given that his mouth was now ducking lower, his tongue flicking against one of Eliot's nipples. "It's been a long couple of days."

"A long fifty years," Eliot sighed, arching up as Quentin suckled against him. "I suppose rest and relaxation is probably in - order - oh - fuck - keep doing that - "

And after Quentin had thoroughly goddamn ruined him all over again, they did go to sleep, slipping into an indulgent nap that they probably didn't have time for, but definitely fucking deserved. There was a lot to do, and they needed to be ready for whatever came next.

They had a boat quest to go on, and a life to live.

* * *

~~**~~**~~**~~**~~

* * *

**QUENTIN**

It ends, and it doesn't end, like this:

When Quentin Coldwater was old enough that his bones ached every morning and didn't really stop aching all day, when he was old enough that his eldest granddaughter was considering marriage, and his favorite haunts in town had changed ownership, and sleeping outside under the stars was an impracticality, when his son was salt-and-pepper-haired and beginning to wrinkle, something terrible happened to him. Something that devastated him and tore his world apart, and made him grieve, and cry, and stay in bed for a week and a half, wishing desperately for the end. Simply put, his husband died.

And as long as we're being honest, for the rest of his life, Quentin was sad. He was sad every second of every day.

At first, that sadness was all of him. He spent his days squeezing his wedding ring against his palm, allowing the echos of Eliot's embrace, the warmth of his laughter, the curl of his smile, to wash over him in a cascading loop of sensation, the only thing that made him want to keep breathing. He avoided the worried looks of the rest of his family and sat alone for days at a time, staring off into space and feeling sorry for himself, and he waited to die.

And then after a while, as hard as it was for Quentin to accept at first, the sadness shifted from sharp and unbearable agony to something softer, a gentle melancholy mixed with fondness and memory. He knew that he'd spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for Eliot, reaching for him in the bed when he stirred out of slumber in the morning, turning to talk to him, the words burning the tip of his tongue before evaporating in the silent echoes of loneliness. It was going to be hard, and it was never going to stop being hard.

But Quentin also knew that he'd spend the rest of his life spending time with his grand-kids, telling stories to little Juliette, offering words of wisdom to Margaret as she became a young woman in her own right. He knew that he'd be there to celebrate Arielle and Taseer's next anniversary, and Teddy's 50th birthday. And he'd ache for Eliot always, in every molecule. But life had been good and long, and his time left was short, and he would learn to keep living.

When Taseer died a few years after Eliot, Arielle moved back to the cottage with Quentin. The two of them spent their twilight years together, widow and widower, a cloud of sadness always between them, the comfort of deep friendship warming their tired hearts. Teddy visited his mother and father often, and his growing family brought joy into their lives. Quentin was determined to die an old, old man in his sleep, peaceful and calm and fulfilled, and he eventually got to a place where he was truly in no hurry to get there.

After all, the puzzle wasn't quite finished, no matter what the quest and magic itself had decided. There were no shortcuts in reaching the beauty of all life, and he'd carry the thing to the finish line for Eliot, who would have been there if he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I cannot begin to explain to you all how much your support has meant to me during the posting of this story! I never imagined I would write such a long piece, and to date this is the longest work of creative fiction I’ve ever written. I’m very proud of it and I’m so glad you stuck with me over the months.
> 
> In other news, I’m not going anywhere! Next week, I’ll begin posting a new story in the Magic Curses series, and after that I have another long project in the works… thank you all for making this community so warm and welcoming.


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